Olympics: Wins, Losses And Claymation

PHOTO FINISH NOW A THING OF THE PAST BUT ‘DIGITAL IMAGE FINISH’ JUST DOESN’T SOUND RIGHT

— You know you have watched too much Olympic competition when?

Well, in my case, it was when I decided that images in a track photo finish looked like Claymation.

Didn’t anyone else notice they looked weird?

Thank goodness the Olympics are over. Two weeks of late nights and sports I would never watch otherwise have left me with dark circles under my eyes and way behind on stuff I really need to do.

The Olympics were, well, the Olympics: exciting competition, heartbreaking losses, exhilarating victories. Hollywood couldn’t have written a better script.

And in the stands there was the U.S. basketball team, which was cake-walking through the competition, cheering on swimmers. And of course the royals were there. William, Harry and Kate rooted for the Brits, but seemed to enjoy some American victories, too.

My favorite moments? It is hard to beat the American swimmers, particularly Missy Franklin. That girl must have been born in the water. Mark my words, barring injury or accident, Missy will eclipse Michael Phelps and we will all be tired of her, too.

For sheer guts, you have to turn to the South African team and Oscar Pistorius. The 26-year-old was born without the fibula in both legs, resulting in amputation below both knees.

That didn’t stop him from participating in sports, and he became a celebrated Paralympian. That wasn’t good enough. Pistorius mounted a legal challenge, which he won, allowing him to take to the London track as a member of the South African Olympic team.

He was eighth in his semifinal for the 400-meter race, but he pledged to be back for Rio de Janeiro in four years.

Pistorius’ prosthetics are Ossur Flex-Foot Cheetahs, according to his website. They are not bionic or motorized. They are “passive-elastic springs” designed to emulate biological legs. They “store and return elastic energy, but cannot generate net positive power.”

There were plenty of things that made me scratch my head and mutter “Huh?”

Like the lady on the Italian water polo team. Truly, I try to avoid judging people based on body type, but as one friend commented, she was “fluffy.” I think that’s a nice word for it.

A lot of us don’t like appearing in public in a swimsuit. Were I this Italian polo player, I would not have been wearing a skintight baby blue suit. I just wouldn’t have. But she did, and she was playing on an Olympic team while I was sitting at home staring at the telly, so I have to say more power to her.

Then there was that screeching during the women’s fencing match.

What, you may ask, was I doing watching fencing? That’s not the point; the point is, in this most elegant of sports, there was screeching going on, and it drove me nuts.

Finally the explanation: The participants were trying to convince the judges they had made a touch during the bout.

Dumb. Real dumb.

That left one question: why the subjects in the photos from photo finishes didn’t look real. The website howstuffworks.com had the answer:

A laser is projected from one end of the finish line to the other, where a light sensor receives the beam. As a runner crosses the line, the beam is blocked, and the sensor sends a signal to the timing console to record the runner’s time.

A high-speed digital video camera aligned with the finish line scans an image through a thin slit up to 2,000 times a second. When the leading edge of each runner’s torso crosses the line, the camera sends an electric signal to the timing console to record the time. The console sends the times to the judges’ consoles and an electronic scoreboard. The images are sent to a computer, which synchronizes them with the time clock and lays them side-by-side on a horizontal time scale, forming a complete image. The computer also draws a vertical cursor down the leading edge of each runner’s torso at the time the finish line was crossed.

The composite image can be broadcast within 30 seconds of the race’s finish.

If I understand this right — and I am only slightly tech savvy — we aren’t seeing a photo, we are seeing a digital image. I guess that’s why the participants all look like they have escaped from a video game.

Gonna have to quit calling them photo finishes. “Digital image finish.” Nope, it just doesn’t have the Olympic ring.

Leeanna Walker is editor of the Rogers Morning News. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/NWALeeanna.

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