Of Nail | 10 Insanely, Incredibly Close Olympic Finishes

Every Olympics produces at least a couple of nail-biting finishes, races so shut you scream ourselves sepulchral screaming at the television, as if that would pull the athletes only a small bit harder.

The Games are similar to that. The really most appropriate athletes in the world pull themselves over anything you can understand in races motionless by hundredths of a second or fractions of an inch. Who can dont think about the fantastic complete of the men's 100-meter moth in Beijing, where Michael Phelps beat Milorad Cavic by a mere 4.7 millimeters? Moments similar to that are because you melody in.

The work of measuring finishes that shut falls to the Olympic timers, a group of 450 technicians who use more than 400 tons of apparatus to make sure unequaled accurateness timing. But infrequently even the really excellent in timing technology is not enough, as you saw during the women's 100-meters trials in June, when Jeneba Tarmoh ended in a de! ceased feverishness against Allyson Felix.

Dead heats are rare, but not unheard of, as you saw during the 1984 Summer Games when Nancy Hogshead and Carrie Steinseifer purebred the same time in the 100-meter freestyle. Both won gold, the initial double-gold in swimming history. Close finishes are what give the Games their excitement.

Here, true from The Book of Olympic Lists: A Treasure-Trove of 116 Years of Olympic Trivia (Arum Press, $14.95) by David Wallechinsky and Jaime Loucky, are 10 incredibly shut Olympic finishes.

Above: 100-meter Freestyle Swimming, 1960

Lance Larson (Lane 4) of the United States and John Devitt of Australia (Lane 3) ended in a nearby deceased heat. Devitt congratulated Larson and left the pool in disappointment. Confusion developed, however, when the judges met to confer their verdict. Of the 3 judges reserved to establish who had ended first, two voted for Devitt and a for Larson. However, the! second-place judges moreover voted 2"1 for Devitt. In other w! ords, of the 6 judges involved, 3 considered Devitt had won and 3 considered Larson had won. When the electronic timers were consulted, it incited out that Larson had purebred 55.1 seconds and Devitt 55.2. The unaccepted electronic timer moreover showed Larson winning"by 4 inches, 55.10 to 55.16. Despite this evidence, the arch judge, Hans Runstrmer of Germany, who did not have any say in the matter according to the authorized rules, systematic Larson's time altered to 55.2 and gave the preference to Devitt. Four years of protests unsuccessful to change the result.

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