What determines the time in olympic swimming? Is there a sensor on the wall?

Question

when the swimmers are done swimming how do they determine who wins? who has the stopwatch?

Answer 1

yea on the wall its called a touchpad which is basically a sensor and senses when they touch and its hooked up to the scoreboard to see who touches first.

Answer 2

Yes there is a sensor on the wall.

Answer 3

For the Olympics Omega (the same company that makes watches) has provided electronic touchpads.  These devices are mounted to the wall at the end of every lane and are linked electronically together into a computer.  The touchpads use piezoelectrics to determine when they are touched.  As a backup to the touchpad, there are two buttons next to the starting block that two judges push when the swimmer touches.  In the case of a failure, the time of the two buttons is averaged.  They also have high speed cameras in place to watch every single touch in order to provide photo finishes and determine the outcome of contested finishes (Cavic and Phelps in the 100m butterfly).  In large meets it also common to have a touchpad built into the starting block in order to get reaction time (time after the start it takes the swimmer to jump) and judge the relays (ensure no false-starts).  A high quality system like the Omega one can usually judge to within a 1000th of a second, while the cameras can go to a 10000th of a second.

Answer 4

They use both sensors on the walls that swimmers have to touch when they are finished with each lap and they also have people with stopwatches as a backup in case there is a technical malfunction.