Claim: Speaker's start contributed to Noah Lyles' 100-meter victory
An August 5 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) speculates on what factors may have led to U.S. runner Noah Lyles' victory over Jamaica's Kishane Thompson in the 100 meters at the Paris Olympics.
“If I did the math right, the speakers in the starting blocks made a difference last night,” reads a screenshot of a post from X (formerly Twitter). “Without the speakers, Lyles would have been at a .008 second disadvantage — the time it takes for the sound of the pistol to travel from lane 4 (Thompson) to lane 7 (Lyles). Lyles won by .005 seconds.”
The Facebook post was shared more than 2,000 times in four days.
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The speaker start system used in the race eliminated a disadvantage that may have cost Lyles the gold medal. Starting races with a starting pistol was eliminated in the Olympics because runners closer to the starter had the advantage of hearing the pistol sooner than runners further away. Due to his different starting position, the time it took Lyles to hear the starting pistol compared to the second-place runner would have been longer than his margin of victory.
The starting system has been changed to eliminate lane position advantages
On August 4, Lyles won the 100 meters by 0.005 seconds after a system of high-speed cameras and timing technology determined that Lyles' torso crossed the finish line before Thompson, the silver medalist.
While training and athleticism were the most important factors in the victory, a change in the way runners are signaled to begin the sprint eliminated the disadvantage historically faced by athletes starting from the outside of the track.
Until 2012, Olympic runners were typically signaled to start their races by firing a gun into the air. According to a 2008 study published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, the runners closest to the person firing the gun hear the sound just a split second earlier than runners further away, giving them a slight advantage in the race. The opposite is true for runners further away.
Omega, which has been the official timekeeper at most Olympic Games for more than a century, has been working for years to improve the starting signal to eliminate the disadvantage of being far away from the starter who fires the pistol in the air. At the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, the company began using the current setup, which combines an electronic starting pistol with redesigned starting blocks (available in a Facebook post) that place speakers the same distance behind each runner. The signals are sounded simultaneously to give no runner an advantage, according to Omega spokesperson Ilana Taub. Taub said the change was actually most important for the 200- and 400-meter races, because runners' starting positions are staggered to account for the curve of the 400-meter oval track.
Experts told USA Today that Lyles, who started in lane seven, would not have been able to win under the old system (all other things being equal) because he would not have heard the starting signal early enough.
A little quick math will show you what this change means for sprinters.
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According to NBC's Olympic Track Rules Guide, track lanes on an Olympic track are 1.22 meters wide, which means Lyles, in lane 7, will be 3.66 meters to the right of Thompson, who is in lane 4, closer to the starter.
Henrik von Koller, an assistant professor in the Georgia Tech School of Music with a background in engineering, said that because the speed of sound at sea level is 343 meters per second, if the starter had fired a traditional pistol into the air, Lyles would have received the starting signal about 0.01 seconds later than Thompson.
Taub and von Kohler, who performed similar calculations, noted that altitude, humidity, air pressure and temperature affect the speed of sound, but none of those variables could have narrowed Lyles' margin of victory by more than 0.005 seconds. They said a 0.008-second lag in social media posts is possible under certain conditions.
USA TODAY has reached out to the Facebook user who shared the claim for comment.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Starting pistol use cost Noah Lyles gold medal | Fact Check
