| That still doesn’t guarantee that the winner was the fastest. Let’s say real times were 58.994999 and 58.995000 seconds. The first gets registered as 58.99, the second as 59.00. Actual difference is a millionth of a second, or, at 2 meters a second, 2μm. I think they do this in swimming more because swimmers, certainly at shorter distances, more race themselves than their competitors. That’s a huge difference with road cycling, where typically the front riders in a sprint could get over the finish earlier, if they wanted to, but don’t want to do that, as, if they did that, their competition would tail them up to the last few meters and then jump over them. Rowing is somewhat of a middle ground. They do use finish photos, even though there’s the same. “Tracks aren’t guaranteed to be the same length” problem as in swimming. A famous example is the men’s scull final in the 2016 Olympics: https://www.olympicchannel.com/en/video/detail/mahe-drysdale... I don’t understand why you think it’s easy to have accurate track length in running. Temperature may affect track length. A lot more importantly, I don’t think it’s even doable in events where runners all start in their own track but are allowed to move to the inner track after x meters. But again, it’s less important there because runners race against each other there more than in short swim races. |
In swimming, the start and finish are both fixed physical objects that the swimmer must touch (though in all events except backstroke, the start is a bit weird because it's outside the pool).
In rowing, the finish line is an imaginary line much like cycling or running. While at the Olympics there are 'clogs' to hold the bows of the boats which drop down at the start:
https://www.polaritas.com/products-and-services/automatic-st...
a race official is always required to certify that the bows are aligned, which is why the gates are transparent (and the system includes video cameras to help this official).