By Tom Slear//Contributor | Tuesday, May 1, 2018
In swimming, we’ve got it good. With the advent of electronic timing, very rarely do the outcomes of close races come down to the subjective opinions of an on-deck official. But that wasn’t always the case. This is part 1 of a two-part story on how swimming’s automatic timing system came to be.
Nearly six decades later, it remains the worst officiating blunder in swimming’s history. The affected event was the men’s 100 free at 1960 Olympics in Rome. The prime competitors were Australian John Devitt, the world record holder and the silver medalist in 1956, and Lance Larson, the fast-improving Southern Cal sophomore who had decisively won the 100 free at the American trials.
