Last Monday, the men's 100 meter final event of the Olympic Games ended with two runners recording a time of 9.79 seconds. However, with the help of high-speed camera technology, Noah Lyles, a runner from the United States, was crowned the gold medalist with an official time of 9.784 seconds, beating Kishane Thompson from Jamaica with a time of 9.789 seconds. This made it the first time in Olympic history that only 0.005 seconds separated the positions of two riders.
This fairly small difference was successfully measured using the Omega Scan 'O' Vision Ultimate camera. Omega has been the official sponsor and timekeeper of the Olympic Games since 1932. Every four years new technology is introduced to enable more accurate timekeeping. The Scan 'O' Vision Ultimate can capture 40,000 frames per second and is an upgrade from the Scan 'O' Vision Myria which "only" captures 10,000 frames per second.
Not only can more pictures be taken per second, it also takes pictures at a higher resolution. Just one hundred years ago, a stopwatch was used at the 1924 Paris Olympics with a time accuracy of only one decimal point.
If Omega hadn't developed their high-velocity camera technology, it's likely that four gold medal winners would have had to be awarded as four runners clocked 9.8 seconds.