Noah Lyles stood with his arms around Kishane Thompson’s neck staring at the giant scoreboard inside the Stade de France. Neither knew who had won the biggest race in the world.
But Janet Nixon did.
Kishane Thompson, front, and Noah Lyles wait to see who has won the men’s 100m.Credit: AP
Sitting nine floors up in the Stade de France stands at the finish line, the engineer from Sydney, watching computer screens with a handful of staff around her, made the call. The clock might have said five thousandths of a second between them, but the screen made it clear: Thompson’s head crossed the line first, but Lyles’ body hit the line first.
Nixon is the chief international photo finish judge. She made the call: Lyles wins.
“The lines on the screen represent the point where we identified a torso. So this torso was first. This torso was second. A head doesn’t qualify. Not the head, not the legs, not the arms, just the torso,” Nixon said.
“You can clearly identify there is first, there’s second, there’s third. And they’re clearly four separate lines. And I don’t look at the times.
“It’s exactly the same thing we do for the men’s 100 final as any other race, any other round. That’s what I said to our people in the room. ‘It’s just like any other race, we just have many more millions of people watching, but they are not in the room. We just do our job. That’s all we have to do’.”
Janet Nixon had the biggest job after the world’s biggest race.Credit: Eddie Jim
But how did an engineer from Epping in north-west Sydney end up being the person sitting in the stands deciding who wins the biggest race at the Olympics, the closest men’s 100m final ever, watched by a billion people?
Firstly, she comes from a line of technical officials – her grandfather was photo finish judge at the Melbourne Olympics in 1956.
Secondly, she decided at a young age her siblings were quicker than her so she timed them. And it went from there – she is a photo judge at her local club, state champs, national champs. And in the Sydney Olympics they got her involved in the photo finish. From there she just keeps being asked back. These are her sixth Olympics, and now she is the chief international judge.
The job gives her a buzz, but she doesn’t get nervous, even with umpteen million people watching. She’s an engineer, she said, she is pedantic and a bit OCD and enjoys clarity and certainty.
The photo that helped Janet Nixon decide the men’s 100m champion.Credit: Omega
The five thousandths of a second seemed an infinitesimally small margin to decide a race by. But to Nixon it wasn’t.
The clock measures to hundredths of a second but the camera captures 2000 times a second. So for the split between Lyles and Thompson, there were 10 pixels of half a thousandth of a second each. The men’s final was decided by five thousandths of a second, but they have decided races before by half a thousandth of a second.
“The same day as the men’s 100, in the morning, we actually had a better race, which was heat three of the men’s hurdles,” Nixon said. A better race might be stretching it, but it was certainly a closer one.
“We had four athletes on the same time to a hundredth of a second. And I’m pretty sure that we had two to the same time to a thousandth of a second. But because we’ve got two pixels in a one thousandth of a second, they were on different pixels.
“So technically one of them won by half a thousandth of a second. We don’t normally report that, but we do report their different rankings.”
The day after the men’s 100m, Nixon again decided a race but this time decided they could not even be split a half a thousandth of a second. It was a dead heat, and it involved an Australian.
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It was the repechage in the women’s 400m involving Australia’s Alanah Yukich. The fact an Australian was involved didn’t change anything, the same way a global TV audience didn’t change anything.
“It was clear that it was a dead heat. We looked at one body and decided where to put the cursor. We looked at the other body, decided where to put the cursor. We moved the cursor backwards confirmed, forwards confirmed on both athletes, just to be sure, and then said, ‘Yes, it was a dead heat’,” she said.
“I don’t get nervous. There’s excitement, there’s thrill, there’s the anticipation, and then there’s game-on business mode. I take it seriously and do the job.”
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Source Agencies
