The Ligue Européenne de Natation (LEN), Europe’s governing body for aquatic sports affiliated to FINA, has issued a statement concerning the discovery of an error in the configuration of the timing system at the 2018 European Swimming Championships in Glasgow on Saturday, 4 August 2018. LEN’s Technical Swimming Committee conducted an investigation and found that “the starting mechanism had been incorrectly configured prior to the start of the session which resulted in all reported times being 0.10s faster due to a configuration delay of 0.10s.”
LEN insists that only 9 heats were affected, and that the prior three sessions, as well as the events in the fourth session that took place after the error was discovered, were not affected. As a result, the LEN TSC has gone back and readjusted all the times swum in the following events on Saturday:
- Women’s 800m freestyle
- Men’s 100m breaststroke
- Women’s 100m butterfly
- Men’s 100m freestyle semi-finals
- Women’s 100m breaststroke semi-finals
- Men’s 200m butterfly semi-finals
Great Britain’s Adam Peaty’s winning time in the 100 breast, originally reported as a new World Record of 57.00, has been adjusted to 57.10. Peaty still clears the World Record; the previous mark of 57.13 belonged to him from the 2016 Olympic Games. He owns the 14 fastest times in history in the event.
To be clear, according to LEN, the races that were not affected are as follows:
- All sessions on 3 August, morning
- All sessions on 3 August, evening
- All sessions of 4 August, morning
- Men’s 50m backstroke race on 4 August, evening
- Women’s 50m freestyle on 4 August, evening
- Mixed 4x200m freestyle relay on 4 August, evening
LEN has announced they will respond to questions relating to the timing error after finals tonight. “LEN Officials will be happy to answer questions from 19.15 hrs today (after the conclusion of today’s session) in the Jury Room at the Tollcross Swimming Centre.”
You can read the official statement here.
REVISED RESULTS 4 AUGUST after LEN statement https://t.co/pdbDOb9BrW #swimming #EC2018 #Glasgow2018 pic.twitter.com/wQ5MdO00P6
— LEN EuropeanAquatics (@LENaquatics) August 5, 2018
Timing systems were never great. They have a decades long history of oppressing innocent swimmers.
Looks like they should review 2017 Worlds time as well. The time for most events is crazy quick.
Reminds me of a comedy here in Australia before the Sydney Games…when the organisers were told the running track was a few metres short…. their response was it is ” ábout 400m long and it will help create more World records!”
How is it that Daktronics and similarly designed systems aren’t barred from being used at championship meets? Either operator error or cheating by operator r frequent problems and have been for decades. It is frustratingly stupid that they design a system that is dependent on plugs that r identical being plugged in the correct order instead of the head of each being unique.
Was thinking this
Next they’ll be telling us the pool is 10cm short.
Wilby is now joint 4th all-time at 58.64 instead of third. Meanwhile the 0.1 adjustment has cost Chupkov the Russian national record (now 59.06, just 0.01 behind Prigoda’s NR 59.05).
No, the adjustment didn’t cost Chupkov the record. The adjustment allowed Prigoda to keep the record that is rightfully his, until it is legitimately broken.
Clowns…..Or should we downgrade the officials to complete muppets.
And I don’t think that FINA will ratify Peaty’s World Record.
I agree. the rules say that there is a certain state of the timing system at the time the swim occurs, or that adjustments occur before final results are posted. That was clearly not the case for this heat.
Actually puppets is more appropriate terminology; the Muppets were funny & respected worldwide. Let’s not sully their name thanks.