[toyg]

True, but each speaker is positioned slightly differently, because it's immediately behind the blocks but each athlete sets the blocks slightly differently (to accomodate their legs). So in theory...

Tbh, it's all just bullshit to me. Less than 20 years ago, this would have been an ex-aequo, and glorifying someone who happened to dive 5-milliseconds-better is just sad. The obsession with "having a winner", for the benefit of sponsors and image contracts, has taken sports in some ridiculous places.

[yuliyp]

That's somewhat the nature of sports: the actual results always have some amount of variance. The differences between athletes are often minute enough that with slightly different circumstances the result would have been different. Yet the pressure of a smaller number of contests with outsized prizes does make for dramatic highs when winning for the competitors as well as drama for the spectators.