In the End, Omega Is Up to the Olympic Timing Task

Michael Phelps's own mother thought he had lost -- so how could the official timekeepers at the Water Cube be sure he out-touched Serbia's Milorad Cavic by one-hundredth of a second to win the gold medal in the men's 100-meter butterfly?

Omega, the Swiss watch company, referred to a triple backup system of redundant numerical and visual evidence that included electronic contact plates in the pool wall, and "photo-finish" technology including digital scanners to determine that Phelps was indeed the winner and to summarily overrule a protest by Cavic's coach.

Most crucial were the electronic signals from the sensors implanted in the wall that Phelps brushed ahead of Cavic by the width of a fingernail.

Until 1967, Olympic swimming races were determined by 24 human timekeepers operating handheld Omega stopwatches (three per lane). But in the 1968 Mexico City Games, Omega debuted the touch pad, which has since become so refined that it keeps time down to the millisecond, although Olympics and world championships use a hundredth as the more sensible measure because of the nature of pool construction.

It's impossible (so far) to build a pool in which each lane is precisely the same length. In addition to the touch pad, for the last 12 years Omega has been using digital cameras. Phelps's race was recorded at 2000 images per second. Omega has been the official Olympic timekeeper since 1932. For the 2008 Games, it is using 450 technicians.

-- Sally Jenkins