Vox's Unexplainable Presents: Jumping the Gun

Sprinter TyNia Gaither was disqualified for a false start... after the gun went off... for running faster than humanly possible. Was that even true? Do sporting officials really understand how the body works? Or do we simply not understand how to define — and record — a race? (This episode originally aired September 21, 2022.) • Subscribe to Vox's "Unexplainable" podcast for more episodes like this, every week https://www.vox.com/unexplainable Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:32Pablo Torre?

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• 1:16Pablo Torre?

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• 2:00Pablo Torre?

  and also give our overworked and underrated staff some time off. And what we have for you today is an episode from one of our kindred spirits over at Vox. This is an episode of a show called Unexplainable, in which they use science multiple times a week to tell a story, to explain something. And this episode just happens to be a sports episode.

• 2:28Pablo Torre?

  It happens to be about an object I've long been fascinated by.

• 2:33Pablo Torre?

  And that object happens to be a gun.

• 2:41Speaker 03

  There's confident, and then there's Tanya Gaither.

• 2:43Speaker 04

  When I was younger, I used to beat up on the boys in PE. And ever since then, like, I've been addicted to what I do.

• 2:49Speaker 03

  What she does is sprint for Team Bahamas at the highest level.

• 2:53Speaker 04

  I love the adrenaline rush that I get every time I line up. I love making my family and my country proud. I wouldn't choose any other career for myself right now.

• 3:02Speaker 03

  Back in July, Tanya was gearing up for a huge race in Oregon.

• 3:06Speaker 04

  This was the World Championships, which is the biggest championship that we have as professional sprinters for the year.

• 3:12Speaker 03

  Tanya had been training for months, day after day, to get ready for this championship. And she'd reached the semifinals of the 100-meter dash.

• 3:20Speaker 04

  These moments are everything to us.

• 3:23Speaker 03

  It was a beautiful day, high 70s, clear blue sky.

• 3:26Speaker 04

  Got on the track, everything was perfect. I was really zoned in to this race because I knew what I was capable of. I knew that I was ready to run the race of my life.

• 3:33Speaker 05

  Tanya Gaither at the Bahamas.

• 3:35Speaker 03

  She lined up in the second lane.

• 3:37Speaker 05

  Twice a World Championship finalist ever 200.

• 3:40Speaker 03

  And Tanya was locked in.

• 3:42Speaker 04

  If you go back and watch the video, you can just see how, like, tense my face looks. I'm like, OK, yeah, like, this is gonna be great.

• 3:47Speaker 03

  She made sure to do her pre-race ritual.

• 3:50Speaker 04

  My teammates like to laugh at me about that. I slap my legs, and I throw my arms up in the air and throw them back over my head and just do like a little shimmy with my shoulders. And then I get into the blocks.

• 4:00Speaker 03

  She set up in the blocks, one leg in front, one leg behind, with both her hands on the ground in front of her.

• 4:06Speaker 04

  I heard the crowd go quiet. Of course, you can hear, you know, a few murmurs or whatever, but that's normal. And, you know, when everybody gets set and still, only when everybody's still, they'll stay set, and you'll come up in your set position. And then I heard the gun go off, and I took off. And then I heard the gun go off again, and then I stopped.

• 4:28Speaker 03

  At this point, it was all confusion. That second gun was officials stopping the race because someone had broken a rule.

• 4:35Speaker 05

  Can't see from this angle. No, I'm not sure I can see that to the naked eye either.

• 4:40Speaker 03

  It's a bit hard to hear, but behind the voices of the commentators, you can just make out an in-stadium announcement.

• 4:49Speaker 03

  False start, line two.

• 4:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's coming up on our screen.

• 4:55Speaker 03

  A false start means that Tania didn't wait for the gun before she reacted. She started too early.

• 5:01Speaker 04

  I couldn't believe it because I just knew it wasn't me. There was no way. I've never false started ever in my life.

• 5:07Speaker 03

  After a false start, all the runners have to line up again and restart. But without Tania this time, because once you false start, you're immediately disqualified.

• 5:16Speaker 04

  I thought it was an error.

• 5:18Speaker 05

  It wasn't immediately obvious to the naked eye. I'd quite like to see that again.

• 5:23Speaker 04

  I knew I started once I heard that gun go off.

• 5:26Speaker 05

  That one was so tight, I think it was indiscernible.

• 5:29Speaker 04

  The crowd was like, "No, no, like you didn't false start."

• 5:32Speaker 05

  Crowd don't like it.

• 5:33Speaker 04

  They was like, "Protest, protest, no, you didn't do anything."

• 5:38Speaker 04

  And then I was like, "Okay, no, I'd like to protest."

• 5:40Speaker 05

  Okay, so this might take a little while.

• 5:42Speaker 03

  Tania walked off the track to make her case to the official.

• 5:46Speaker 04

  And he has a little screen that shows him the video replay.

• 5:49Speaker 05

  Wow, that's so marginal. That's really hard to tell with the naked eye.

• 5:53Speaker 04

  Literally looked like I did nothing wrong.

• 5:55Speaker 03

  But the official wasn't just looking at the replay.

• 5:58Speaker 04

  He also showed me my reaction time, and it was like lit up in red, which means, you know, basically the start was just too fast.

• 6:06Speaker 03

  Pressure sensors in the starting blocks showed that Tania had started 0.093 seconds after the gun went off.

• 6:14Speaker 04

  After the gun went off. Like, I'm mind-blown. You're telling me I'm penalized for something I did after the gun went off?

• 6:24Speaker 05

  Just a reminder, I know many of you will be familiar with this. If it's quicker than a tenth of a second, it's deemed to be illegal.

• 6:31Speaker 03

  Tania was officially disqualified for reacting 7,000ths of a second quicker than the legal limit.

• 6:37Speaker 04

  According to what they were trying to tell us, no human can possibly move that fast without anticipating it.

• 6:43Speaker 03

  The officials were saying that because it's impossible to react within a tenth of a second, Tania must have started before the gun went off, even if no one could see it. They were basically telling Tania, "You didn't wait for the gun to go off before you started. You cheated. You guessed."

• 7:00Speaker 04

  There was no guessing in my start. My coach trains us to wait until we hear the start. And in fact, sometimes she'll hold it extra long for us just to see if we would jump out the block. So we train to make sure that we don't throw away our opportunities.

• 7:15Speaker 03

  Tania wasn't the only one who was disqualified for a false start after the gun at these world championships. It happened to Julian Alfred, who started 0.095 seconds after the gun.

• 7:26Speaker 05

  She's right in the center of your picture in the white. Yep. It's very, very, very marginal.

• 7:31Speaker 03

  And then it happened to Devon Allen, who started 0.099 seconds after the gun.

• 7:37Speaker 06

  And he is faster than that tenth of a second allowance. You know how much faster he is? By 1,000ths of a second. I just saw the start official say, "I'm sorry."

• 7:48Speaker 03

  All three of these sprinters started after the gun, and all three of them were disqualified in some of the biggest races of the year.

• 7:55Speaker 05

  I really don't like seeing people disqualified. Having said that, rules are rules, aren't they? It was our rules. You're right.

• 8:01Speaker 04

  But I just couldn't understand what they were saying.

• 8:05Speaker 03

  I'm Noam Hassenfeld, and this week on Unexplainable, how fast can humans react? And is a rule like this actually fair?

• 8:29Speaker 03

  Okay, Brian.

• 8:30Speaker 07

  Nob.

• 8:31Speaker 03

  There's this rule in running that we've both been thinking about for a while.

• 8:34Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 8:34Speaker 03

  It's designed to prevent people from guessing when the gun goes off. And it all relies on the assumption that it's impossible to react in less than a tenth of a second, that people who start that quickly are actually starting in their heads before the gun. So I wanted to ask you about the science here. Like, does this idea of a limit to human reaction time make sense?

• 8:55Speaker 07

  Yes, the concept behind this rule does make sense. You can't react instantly to a sound.

• 9:02Speaker 08

  There is a neurophysiological limits that need to be defined to prevent some athlete to have an unfair advantage by anticipating the gun.

• 9:12Speaker 07

  So I found a scientist who's doing his PhD on this exact question. His name is Mathieu Milos.

• 9:19Speaker 08

  My name is Mathieu Milos.

• 9:20Speaker 07

  He's French, so I apologize if I've said his name wrong. And he thinks this idea of setting a limit makes sense because reacting to a gun just takes time.

• 9:31Speaker 03

  Right.

• 9:31Speaker 07

  There's so many things that need to happen just to get you out of the starting box.

• 9:35Speaker 08

  There is like different component to the response time.

• 9:39Speaker 07

  So first, the gun goes off.

• 9:44Speaker 07

  There's time it takes for that sound of the gun to get into your ears.

• 9:48Speaker 08

  So there is the time.

• 9:49Speaker 07

  Your ears has to convert that stimulus into a neural signal.

• 9:53Speaker 08

  Then there is the time.

• 9:55Speaker 07

  Your nervous system has to identify that signal.

• 9:57Speaker 08

  The time.

• 9:59Speaker 07

  Send a command down to your muscles to start moving, and that takes some time. And then there's time for like the muscle itself to start contracting, to move.

• 10:08Speaker 08

  And then there is the time.

• 10:13Speaker 07

  Like you actually exerting force on the starting box that would detect your movement.

• 10:19Speaker 08

  So there is all these different components. It's complex.

• 10:25Speaker 07

  So this idea of a limit in sprinting makes sense.

• 10:29Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 10:30Speaker 07

  But what I just cannot figure out is where this number, 10th of a second, where does that come from?

• 10:36Speaker 03

  So I looked into this. I talked to a historian who wrote a report about this for World Athletics, which is the organization that runs these world championships we've been talking about.

• 10:44Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 10:44Speaker 03

  His name is PJ Vazell, and he told me that it actually traces all the way back to the 60s and this West German sprinter named Armin Hari. With a surging power and explosive pace, but he also possessed the most dubious starting technique that international sprinting has ever seen. Hari was famous for being a suspiciously fast starter. His fellow Germans called him the thief of starts. He did apparently have a really fast reaction time. They tested him, though we don't know exactly how accurate that was.

• 11:15Speaker 09

  Many believe he actually beats the gun.

• 11:18Speaker 03

  Ultimately, we don't know if Hari was guessing his starts or if he just had superhuman reflexes, but in 1960, he won a bunch of races, got called for some false starts, and people were pissed because back then, you know, you didn't get immediately disqualified for your first false start. They would just run the race again.

• 11:36Speaker 07

  Oh, okay.

• 11:37Speaker 03

  So it got a little messy. And West Germany, you know, they wanted something more objective, so they got these force sensors that could automatically detect when someone started. And this 10th of a second limit basically comes from the company that designed them.

• 11:52Speaker 10

  The traditional brand Hume Hans has been a trailblazer in watch design for 160 years.

• 11:58Speaker 03

  That said that they had tested a bunch of runners and found that no one could start faster than a 10th of a second.

• 12:04Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 12:04Speaker 03

  So that sort of like company finding became the basis for this rule of thumb that continued for a couple decades until 1989, when World Athletics, then known as IAAF, made it official.

• 12:20Speaker 07

  So when Tania was disqualified and told you couldn't have possibly started that fast.

• 12:26Speaker 03

  Right.

• 12:27Speaker 07

  That was just based on something a German company said in the 1960s?

• 12:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, basically.

• 12:34Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 12:35Speaker 03

  That's what this historian told me. World Athletics has said it's based on science. So I reached out to them and they told me that a 10th of a second was determined to be the quote, "minimum auditory reaction time." But they didn't point to a specific study.

• 12:49Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 12:50Speaker 03

  The main study that other people point to is this study on eight amateur sprinters, which is just a really small sample size. And it also seems like the study came out after they made the rule. So I just basically have a ton of questions about the science here.

• 13:06Speaker 07

  Okay, so this whole story you're telling me makes perfect sense, considering when I asked Mathieu about this number, like, do you think it's valid? He told me-

• 13:14Speaker 08

  The 100 millisecond false start threshold is not science-based.

• 13:19Speaker 07

  He argues that this 10th of a second limit is just not based in rigorous science.

• 13:25Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 13:25Speaker 07

  And we really don't know what the actual number is, what the limit ought to be. If you look at the scientific literature, you can find there have been a bunch of studies that try to answer the question, how fast someone can start a race? And they all kind of find slightly different numbers. People can start faster than 0.1 seconds. Mathieu says he's even found this in his own work.

• 13:48Speaker 08

  I'm sure that you can react in less than 100 milliseconds in sprint start.

• 13:55Speaker 07

  And there is no paper you can go to that has like the gold standard for studying how fast people can start. There's a lot of small studies on this. They find different numbers. So there's just not a lot of confidence from the scientific community that World Athletics has like a correct, firm number here.

• 14:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, I actually came across a study that was commissioned by World Athletics itself in 2009. And that study said the 10th of a second limit is incorrect.

• 14:26Speaker 07

  Oh, so they know this?

• 14:27Speaker 03

  Apparently. And I asked them about that, but they said this study was too small to actually merit a rule change.

• 14:34Speaker 07

  So do a better study.

• 14:36Speaker 03

  Right, I mean, given that all of these studies are so small, it makes me wonder, like, is reaction time in a race a particularly hard thing to study?

• 14:46Speaker 07

  When I asked Mathieu about this, he explained it is very complicated. There are just a lot of variables to control for. So one thing here is that depending on how loud the start sound is, people might start faster.

• 15:00Speaker 03

  Like a startle response or something?

• 15:02Speaker 07

  Yeah, well, it's just like if it's louder, people seem to start faster. And then the longer the official wait, the faster the start times can be. Because like you're just, you're just so ready to start.

• 15:13Speaker 03

  It's like a, it's like a spring being coiled up or something?

• 15:16Speaker 07

  Yeah. And then like, when it comes to like these sensors themselves, apparently like how they decide when a start happens can be like very variable between sensors. Like there doesn't seem to be enough consistency here in either like the science or the practice to like really exactly nail down a number.

• 15:34Speaker 03

  So if this 10th of a second limit isn't based on rigorous science, do we have a sense of what a better general area of rightness might be?

• 15:43Speaker 07

  So I asked Mathieu this question and he said,

• 15:48Speaker 08

  If I give you a number now, I will kind of lie to you.

• 15:51Speaker 07

  If I gave you a number, I would be lying to you. If you look around, there are some scientists who have done some like back of the napkin calculations, you know, that whole list of things that I outlined that need to happen before you could start a race. Some say that could take 85 milliseconds, so 15 milliseconds faster than, you know, what is allowed. But then again, like, you know, Mathieu was, he was very insistent on there's like, there's no perfect way to measure anything. So any measurement is going to come with some range of error. At the same time, Mathieu thinks it's important to get a better range of what the limit could be because the victories here can be decided by hundreds, thousands of a second.

• 16:33Speaker 08

  The margin of victory is so small in spring start. I think it's worth to try to improve this.

• 16:40Speaker 07

  Mechu basically thinks that improving on this number and getting a better estimate of it will really make races fair.

• 16:50Speaker 03

  So is there a way to get a better sense of what this limit might be? Or is it just too many moving parts?

• 16:57Speaker 07

  He just wants to make this research a lot more rigorous.

• 16:59Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 17:00Speaker 07

  He really wants to take the fastest elite athletes and bring them into the lab.

• 17:04Speaker 03

  So not amateurs anymore?

• 17:05Speaker 07

  Yeah, not using amateurs.

• 17:07Speaker 08

  Top level sprinters reacts quicker than you and me.

• 17:11Speaker 07

  It turns out on the track, during a competition, there's some evidence that suggests that runners are not starting as fast as they possibly could because they just don't want to risk false starting.

• 17:22Speaker 08

  They prefer to delay their response time to not be disqualified.

• 17:26Speaker 03

  Ah.

• 17:27Speaker 07

  That's why he wants to bring them to the lab and say, okay, everyone, don't worry about false starts. We just want to see how fast you could possibly start and just collect a lot of data on some of the fastest people in the world. He wants to make sure researchers can control for all those variables with the sensors and really just find a gold standard to agree on that this is the best way to record a race start and then plot that data in a distribution curve and see really where we can better decide on where the limit is.

• 17:59Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 18:00Speaker 07

  He also thinks that we've been measuring sprint starts in just the wrong place.

• 18:04Speaker 03

  What do you, what do you mean?

• 18:06Speaker 07

  So far, we've been talking about the feet.

• 18:07Speaker 03

  Right.

• 18:08Speaker 07

  You know, like when your foot moves, like that's when the race starts. But he says like the actual first thing that moves when you start to run are your hands.

• 18:15Speaker 03

  Like you're crouched in the starting blocks, your two hands are on the ground in front of you and you're pushing off with your hands.

• 18:21Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 18:21Speaker 08

  Yeah, they push on the floor first.

• 18:23Speaker 07

  So that is the first movement you do. And like, he says that is much faster.

• 18:28Speaker 08

  I have a difference, an average difference about 50 milliseconds between the impulse in the legs and the impulse on the floor that react first.

• 18:37Speaker 03

  So that's like a huge difference.

• 18:39Speaker 07

  Yeah, maybe that's where we should decide where the race starts.

• 18:46Speaker 03

  So that all sounds great.

• 18:50Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 18:50Speaker 03

  But to be honest, like, I'm not actually sure more science and more technology is the whole answer here.

• 18:59Speaker 07

  Isn't the answer usually more science? We need more science? I always say it on this show like every week.

• 19:05Speaker 03

  It's definitely often science, but when it comes to sports, I mean, I think using technology in the name of fairness, it's harder than you think. And there's an argument that sort of a hyper-focus on technology might actually be ruining sports a bit.

• 19:22Speaker 07

  Oh, I want to hear that.

• 19:24Speaker 03

  I'll tell you after the break.

• 19:29Pablo Torre?

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• 20:01Speaker 00

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• 20:36Speaker 11

  So he yells out, "Ready, on your mark, get set." And I was so keyed up, I just took off.

• 20:44Speaker 03

  So we've got this rule that really seems to be unscientific, to say the least.

• 20:49Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 20:49Speaker 03

  And honestly, kind of unfair. And there's rumblings that World Athletics might be considering changing it. A World Athletics Council member from Finland actually called for a rule change on this. And the president of World Athletics said-

• 21:04Speaker 12

  And yeah, the false start rule, I'm sure, will be looked at by the Competition Commission. And everything is on the table, as it always is after a championship.

• 21:14Speaker 03

  World Athletics actually sent me a great statement on this, which said, quote, "It is standard procedure after each World Championships for the World Athletics Competition Commission to review the championships and recommend any rule changes."

• 21:27Speaker 07

  So they're not saying anything?

• 21:29Speaker 03

  Not really. So until they do figure out how to change this, I guess, I was wondering if we could try to figure out how we might get to a perfectly fair race.

• 21:40Speaker 07

  Yeah, like, what are the options here?

• 21:43Speaker 03

  Okay, so on the one hand, we've got Machu, right? He wants to use more science, more technology, to kind of get finer distinctions on this limit, you know, take this kind of non-scientific 10th of a second limit and bring it firmly into the realm of science, rigorous science, like you said.

• 22:01Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 22:01Speaker 03

  And that's broadly what a lot of the people I spoke to also told me. So the historian I talked to, PJ, he said he wanted a lower, more precise limit. I talked to a sports scientist, Matt Payne, who said the same thing. And they both said, "We also need more transparency around exactly how these machines work."

• 22:20Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 22:20Speaker 03

  So, you know, we can hold them accountable.

• 22:22Speaker 07

  Yeah, we need to know, like, each machine is making the same decision around, like, when that person started.

• 22:29Speaker 03

  Right, and that's actually what some people think happened at the World Championships with Tania and these other runners, that something must have been up with the machines, because reaction times were just, like, super fast across the board. And honestly, I think that's a key problem with having this really strictly enforced limit, because applying this tiny distinction across tons of machines perfectly consistently without any error is clearly showing itself to be really difficult.

• 22:58Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 22:59Speaker 03

  And it's also always possible that someone can come along, you know, with just superhuman reaction time. And slightly, just slightly break this limit, whatever we find.

• 23:07Speaker 07

  Yeah, and the limit is always going to be a fuzzy number anyway.

• 23:11Speaker 03

  Right. And, you know, if you draw a clear line in the middle of what is ultimately just a fuzzy border, and someone is barely on the other side of that clear line, like, is it really enough to label them a cheater?

• 23:25Speaker 07

  I don't know.

• 23:25Speaker 03

  You know, like, technology doesn't necessarily make fuzzy borders go away.

• 23:30Speaker 13

  Sports have not been created or invented to deal with the technology that we have today.

• 23:38Speaker 03

  So I talked to this sports writer, Joe Poznanski, and he's written a lot about the use of technology in sports. Joe says that, like, technology can give us a lot more data, but it's not always clear that more data equals more accuracy, especially when we're dealing with sort of fuzzy borders and, and sports, which are ultimately, they're games, right? They're not scientific experiments.

• 23:58Speaker 13

  There is a way to break down the context of any game to a point where it's no longer a game, where it's no longer makes any sense.

• 24:07Speaker 07

  I think it's kind of funny. We've been talking to scientists who the answer to this question is, well, we just need more precise sensors. We need better science. We need more, you know, data, data, data. And I'm sure that's, that's fun for them.

• 24:19Speaker 03

  Right. Yeah. And Joe told me that it can cause some real problems.

• 24:24Speaker 13

  In baseball, for example, it used to be that a guy stole a base and the tag was late, he was safe. That's how that worked.

• 24:37Speaker 03

  So as long as you're touching the base, you're safe.

• 24:39Speaker 07

  That's the one thing I know about baseball.

• 24:41Speaker 03

  Right. That's the main rule of baseball.

• 24:44Speaker 13

  But now, if you slow it down enough, you'll see that occasionally, the guy, when he slides into second base.

• 24:51Speaker 03

  Just for a fraction of a second.

• 24:54Speaker 13

  His foot will bounce off the bag for like the smallest amount. I mean, a millimeter.

• 25:01Speaker 03

  And what happens in baseball now sometimes is they go to this, like, instant replay review, and then the ump's like.

• 25:07Speaker 13

  He's out now.

• 25:12Speaker 13

  That's not the way the game was intended to be played. Nobody ever even knew this existed.

• 25:17Speaker 03

  And they stopped the game for like a while.

• 25:19Speaker 13

  You know, instead it becomes this people just poring over it like it's the Zabruder film, trying to figure out, is this guy safe? Is this guy out? It's not great.

• 25:29Speaker 07

  You know, I'm realizing that if we, if we went the max technology limit and you actually got to an absurdly small view, you would see that actually we don't touch anything.

• 25:40Speaker 03

  Matter is mostly empty space. It's, it's just electromagnetism that's convincing us we're touching, right?

• 25:45Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 25:45Speaker 03

  No runner is ever touching a base and no fielder is ever tagging a runner.

• 25:50Speaker 07

  This is, this is a little, I think we got a little too deep for this topic.

• 25:54Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 25:54Speaker 07

  But I see what you mean in that like, there's always going to be like, the closer you zoom into things, you, you see actually like our experience of that thing, like touching a base is not necessarily what's happening on a microscopic view.

• 26:10Speaker 03

  Yeah. And it's not just baseball either. Like in basketball, there are these endless replay reviews on fouls.

• 26:17Speaker 14

  I get so bored of these replays. We got a great game going.

• 26:21Speaker 03

  Again, it's a gray area of like, what is a foul?

• 26:23Speaker 14

  Is that an offensive foul or I don't know?

• 26:26Speaker 03

  And then in football, there's this kind of like deeply philosophical issue of what is a catch?

• 26:31Speaker 07

  What?

• 26:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, like it used to be.

• 26:33Speaker 07

  Like it's in your hands?

• 26:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, it seems like this really simple idea, like, are you holding the ball? But now it's like.

• 26:39Speaker 06

  The runner did not complete the catch during the process of the catch.

• 26:43Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 26:44Speaker 03

  If you zoom in really close, is the ball moving a tiny little bit when you hit the ground like?

• 26:48Speaker 07

  Even though it's in your hands?

• 26:49Speaker 03

  Even though it's in your hands. And even though like, it was always considered a catch before.

• 26:55Speaker 06

  And you've got to continue through the play. We will now review the previous play.

• 27:02Speaker 03

  I don't want to sound like technology is really bad, you know? It has its place in sports, especially when the lines aren't as fuzzy. So like, who finishes a race first seems a lot easier to judge on replay than who started. Or like tennis where, you know, whether a ball is in or out, like that's a pretty clear decision. But using fancy technology and tons of camera angles on things like the start of a race or what is a catch in football, it can end up being really disappointing to fans because, you know, you're expecting this clear, objective result from all this technology. And it's just a fuzzy border. Like, technology can't solve this problem.

• 27:42Speaker 07

  Yeah, we signed up to come to a game, not to a, you know, slide presentation.

• 27:46Speaker 03

  It's, it's, yeah, it's like something you would do in a lab. It's not something you want to do, you know, in an arena.

• 27:52Speaker 07

  So should we just throw out all the sensors, the cameras, everything? And just, just go out there and have fun?

• 28:01Speaker 03

  So I think there's a couple of things we could do here. So we could throw out the limit entirely. Like, just go back to the eye test to see who false started.

• 28:10Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 28:10Speaker 03

  But this sports scientist I talked to told me that, like, people's perception of movement can actually be different. So some people could actually be better at spotting movement than other people.

• 28:22Speaker 07

  So introducing yet another complication to when does a race start?

• 28:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, and, and we could also, like, keep these pressure sensors, but just get rid of this 10th of a second reaction time limit. Like, just have the race start when the gun goes off and just say, that's, that's it.

• 28:39Speaker 07

  That makes sense to me, you know, like, not, not giving people, you know, penalties for these apparent thought crimes that they, you know, started before the gun in their head.

• 28:49Speaker 03

  Right, that's intuitive, right? Like, that's what we think a race should be. But without this reaction time limit, both of these other options might actually incentivize runners to anticipate the gun, like, to guess when the gun would go off.

• 29:01Speaker 07

  Is it a huge problem to anticipate the gun? Couldn't that just be a part of the race?

• 29:08Speaker 03

  Well, it's against the rules, for one thing, but it could also just make races super chaotic. Like, there'd be false starts and restarts all the time. I don't really think races would want to incentivize that.

• 29:20Speaker 07

  Wouldn't runners still just get disqualified? There, there's still a big cost for jumping the gun.

• 29:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's a big cost, but the people I talked to said they think runners would risk it. Like, if you're racing someone who's just way faster than you and your only shot is to anticipate the gun, you might just risk it, even if you could get disqualified. And then some people probably wouldn't risk it. So, you know, if we're looking for the fairest possible race, like, one where every single person is being timed from the gun to the finish line, I don't really think the answer is taking away the limit and maybe encouraging people to jump the gun more.

• 29:54Speaker 07

  I think every option here will fail us in some way. It's just deciding which failure feels like sports.

• 30:04Speaker 03

  I think that's exactly right. And that's something that Joe said to me. He basically said.

• 30:09Speaker 13

  There's no way to make sports perfectly fair. What you want to do is make it fair enough that people have faith in it. But we accept the illusion.

• 30:22Speaker 03

  So Joe's favorite solution for fuzzy borders in sports like baseball and football is just to accept the gray area. Let the official watch the replay in real time, no slow mo. And if the call can't be overturned, just stick with the call in the field because perfectly fair isn't possible.

• 30:38Speaker 07

  Yeah, I think perfect fairness is impossible. But at least with this false start rule, we could probably make it a little fairer.

• 30:48Speaker 03

  We definitely can, especially because we know this reaction time limit isn't right. So lowering the limit seems like a clear move.

• 30:56Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 30:56Speaker 03

  We can embrace the fact that we'll probably need to keep updating it over time. And then ultimately, if we're honest about the fact that when a race starts is kind of this fuzzy border, we'll end up labeling fewer people cheaters who probably didn't cheat.

• 31:12Speaker 04

  It's still embarrassing because, you know, you don't want to ever be labeled as somebody that cheated.

• 31:18Speaker 03

  Tanya is still thinking about her false start at the world championships in July, when officials said she started before hearing the gun.

• 31:25Speaker 04

  I literally waited till I heard what I needed to hear, just like I have done in hundreds of other races.

• 31:31Speaker 03

  For a while, it was hard to shake.

• 31:33Speaker 04

  You know, I haven't really shared this with many people, but I've kind of been experiencing a little PTSD with it because now, when I get in my blocks, the only thing that I'm thinking about in my blocks is be patient. That's literally the thing that's been engraved in my head since that moment. Be patient because you can't afford for that to happen again. I'm one of the true lovers of this sport. I love what I do.

• 31:55Speaker 04

  And, you know, as, as big of a blow as that was, it, it hasn't changed, you know, my eagerness to step on the line.

• 32:03Speaker 03

  And last month, in August, she was back on the blocks at another big race.

• 32:08Speaker 15

  Brittany Brown followed closely by Tania Gaither.

• 32:11Speaker 03

  She took home a silver medal, running a personal best in the 200 meter dash. But the thought of that false start after the gun in July, it's still lingering in the back of her head. So at the end of all this, I, I told her about our reporting and all the people we've talked to. And I guess like, it doesn't seem like, to me, like you cheated.

• 32:29Speaker 04

  Yes, that's how I feel.

• 32:33Speaker 04

  But I guess the data says I cheated.

• 32:36Speaker 03

  And, you know, I, I think based on the science here, we have good reason to say Tania Gaither is not a cheater.

• 32:42Speaker 04

  Wow. Well, I really appreciate that. I, I would love for the world to see that, that research.

• 32:50Speaker 00

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• 33:37Speaker 07

  This episode was reported and produced by Noam Hassanfeld and me, Brian Resnick. It was edited by Meredith Hadenot and Catherine Wells. Noam wrote the music. Efim Shapiro did the mixing and sound design. And Serena Solan checked the facts. Mandy Nguyen is growing magic beans in her backyard. Christian Aiella is hanging out on the other side of the world from us. And Bird Pinkerton hasn't found treasure in the woods yet, but she did find a mysterious key. Special thanks to PJ Vazell, Matt Payne, and Robert Johnson for their help this week. If you have thoughts about this episode or ideas for the show, please email us.

• 34:21Speaker 07

  We're [email protected]. We'd also love it if you wrote us a review or a rating. Unexplainable is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and we'll be back next week.

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