The A-Z of Sports Vision - Jumping the Gun

In international sprint events, such as the 100 metres, a false start is called if an athlete’s foot increases the force on their starting block within 100 milliseconds of the gun. The IAAF decided on this threshold in the belief that humans cannot react to a sound in less than 100ms. Is this right? Komi, Ishikawa & Salmi (2009) found that there was quite a bit of variation in reaction times, and that the values in some cases were even below 80ms. They therefore recommended to the IAAF that the value should be reduced to 80 or 85ms. They also suggested that high speed cameras should be used to detect any first movement before the set minimum reaction time, rather than pressure on the blocks. Brown, Kenwell, Maraj & Collins (2008) reviewed reaction times for the 2004 Olympics in Athens. They found that runners in Lane 1 had an average reaction time of 160ms, whereas those in Lane 2 took 171ms. The slowest lane, for some reason, was Lane 7 (rather than the expected Lane 8) with 185ms. When experiments were carried out on athletes and non-athletes, they found that non-athletes had faster reaction times when the sound was louder. Assessment of their blinks suggested that being startled produced faster reaction times. Athletes, it seemed, were able to produce their fastest reactions without being startled. During their experiments, the researchers noted that 21% of participants recorded reaction times faster than 100ms, although subjects only had to move an arm in response, rather than their whole body. Nevertheless, it’s interesting that Linford Christie was disqualified in the 1996 Olympic final with a reaction time of 86ms, and was convinced that he had not jumped the gun. One other thing: Lipps, Galecki & Ashton-Miller analysed reaction times of male and female sprinters at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. They found that men and women could react in as little as 109ms and 121ms respectively. However, they believe that this difference is an artefact caused by the fact that the rule of how much extra force is needed to put on the blocks to register a start time is the same for both men and women. Taking into account the less muscle strength of the women compared to the men, the force requirement should be reduced by about 22%. Effectively, they claim, this allows women to false start by up to 21ms without penalty. If they had a visual system of starting, such as a light flashing on, and a visual system to detect early movement, perhaps it would all be fairer. David Donner