Vox's Unexplainable Presents: Jumping the Gun

Summary

Podcast Episode Summary

Podcast: Pablo Torre Finds Out (Le Batard & Friends)
Episode: Vox's Unexplainable Presents: Jumping the Gun
Air Date: July 24, 2025
Host: Pablo Torre (with Noam Hassenfeld & Brian Resnik, Unexplainable)
Theme: The limits of human reaction time in elite sprinting—specifically, the science (or lack thereof) behind the false start rule in track & field and the broader implications of over-reliance on technology in sports officiating.

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Episode Overview

This episode, a collaboration with Vox’s Unexplainable, investigates the controversial “tenth of a second” false start rule in track & field. Through the story of sprinter Tynia Gaither's disqualification, the episode probes whether this limit is actually scientifically valid, how it came to be, and what its enforcement reveals about the complicated intersection of fairness, technology, and human performance in sports. The discussion questions if more technology always means more justice in games—and whether there can ever be such a thing as a “perfectly fair” sporting contest.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Tynia Gaither’s False Start Incident (01:06–06:26)

• Set Up: Tynia Gaither, elite Bahamian sprinter, is disqualified from the World Championships 100m semi-final for a false start.
• Her Reaction:
  • "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." (03:27, Tynia)
  • "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." (04:40, Tynia)
• Technical Explanation: Her recorded reaction time was 0.093 seconds—7 milliseconds (thousandths of a second) under the 0.1-second (100 ms) legal threshold.

2. Origins and Rationale of the False Start Rule (06:31–11:16)

• Purpose: Rule prevents "guessing" the start; grounded in assumption that humans can’t react to the gun faster than 0.1 seconds.
• History: Dates back to a German company’s findings in the 1960s; later formalized globally in 1989.
  • "That was just based on something a German company said in the 1960s." (10:53, Brian)
• Scientific Legitimacy: The supposed “science” comes from outdated, small-sample studies—sometimes on amateurs, sometimes after the rule was already formalized.

3. Is 0.1 Seconds Actually a Scientific Limit? (11:16–15:15)

• Expert Input: PhD student Mathieu Meloz says the threshold is not truly science-based:
  • "The 100 millisecond false start threshold is not science based." (11:39, Mathieu)
• Studies: Reaction times vary widely in the literature; elite sprinters can sometimes go faster than 0.1 seconds, especially in more controlled lab settings.
• Variables:
  • Louder starting signals mean faster starts.
  • Sensor types and calibration differ.
  • Fatigue, anticipatory strategies, and even which body part moves first (hands vs. feet) can impact results.

4. Reconsidering How We Measure a Race Start (15:22–17:16)

• What Should Define a Start?:
  • Current measurement tracks the feet, but hands usually move first.
  • "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." (16:53, Mathieu)

5. Limits of Technology and Fairness in Sports (17:16–27:58)

• Tech’s Double-Edged Sword: Excessive precision can create skewed, unintuitive rulings (e.g., baseball replays on “microscopic” bag touches, NFL’s “catch" controversies).
  • “There is a way to break down the context of any game to a point where it's no longer a game, where it no longer makes any sense.” (21:18, Joe Posnanski)
• Reality of Fuzzy Borders:
  • “Technology doesn't necessarily make fuzzy borders go away.” (20:46, Noam)
  • “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.” (27:31, Joe Posnanski)

6. What Would Be Fairer? (25:21–28:32)

• Alternatives Explored:
  • Eye test without sensors (introduces subjective error)
  • Keep sensors, but eliminate/examine the strict reaction time cut-off
  • Lower the threshold, but acknowledge that any number will be somewhat arbitrary
• Conclusion:
  • “I think every option here will fail us in some way. It's just deciding which failure feels like sports.” (27:14, Brian)
  • The best we can do is continually adjust the rule as new data comes in and be honest about the inescapable “fuzziness.”

7. Personal Toll of the Rule (28:38–30:02)

• Tynia Gaither Reflects:
  • "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 ... is be patient ... because you can't afford for that to happen again." (28:53, Tynia)
  • “I literally waited till I heard what I needed to hear, just like I've done in hundreds of other races.” (28:45, Tynia)
• Vindication from Reporting:
  • “Based on the science here, we have good reason to say Tynia Gaither is not a cheater.” (29:56, Noam)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Tynia Gaither:
  • “...you're telling me I'm penalized for something I did after the gun went off.” (04:40)
  • "It's still embarrassing because, you know, you don't want to ever be labeled as somebody that cheated." (28:32)
• Mathieu Meloz:
  • “The 100 millisecond false start threshold is not science based.” (11:39)
  • “Top level sprinters react quicker than you and me.” (15:33)
• Joe Posnanski:
  • “Sports have not been created or invented to deal with the technology that we have today.” (20:51)
  • “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.” (27:31)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Tynia Gaither’s False Start Experience: 01:06–06:26
• Science and History of the Rule: 06:31–11:16
• Expert & Research Breakdown: 11:16–17:16
• Lessons from Tech in Other Sports: 17:16–25:02
• Alternatives and Limits: 25:21–28:32
• Tynia’s Long-term Reflections & Episode Conclusion: 28:32–30:02

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Conclusion

This episode exposes the shaky scientific grounding of a rule that can derail elite athletes’ careers in milliseconds. It explores the difficulty (maybe impossibility) of ever making sports perfectly fair, especially when technological “objectivity” collides with the essentially human fuzziness of the games we love. The takeaway: all limits are imperfect—and sometimes, “fair enough” is the best we can hope for.

Tynia Gaither’s story, in the end, isn't just about milliseconds or rules, but about the deep emotional and philosophical stakes of fairness in sport.

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For listeners interested in the science of sports, human performance, or the philosophical limits of fairness and technology in competition, this episode is a must.

Transcript

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Hello.

[Brian Resnik]

It is.

[Pablo Torre]

It is I. It is me. Either way, it's Pablo. Listen, it's been a hell of a two weeks here at Pablo Torre finds out my brain is a little broken by that, as the intro to this might suggest. And we'll get to all of the stuff that has been developing in these last several days with the NFLPA and more in coming episodes in coming weeks. But today we wanted to bring you something different 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. It happens to be about an object I've long been fascinated by. And that object happens to be a gun.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

There's confident and then there's Tynia Gaither.

[Tynia Gaither]

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.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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

[Tynia Gaither]

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.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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

[Tynia Gaither]

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

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Tynea had been training for months, day after day to get ready for this championship and she'd reached the semifinals of the hundred meter dash.

[Tynia Gaither]

These moments are everything to us.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

It was a Beautiful day. High 70s, clear blue sky, got out on the track.

[Tynia Gaither]

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.

[Commentator]

Tanya Gaither of the Bahamas, she lined.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Up in the second lane twice. A World Championship finalist over 210 was locked in.

[Tynia Gaither]

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

[Noam Hassenfeld]

She made sure to do her pre race ritual.

[Tynia Gaither]

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.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

She sat up in the blocks, one leg in Front, one leg behind. With both her hands on the ground in front of her.

[Tynia Gaither]

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 say 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.

[Commentator]

Now again.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

At this point, it was all confusion. That second gun was officials stopping the race because someone had broken a rule. Can't see from this angle.

[Commentator]

No, I'm not sure I can see that to the naked eye either.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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

[Commentator]

Yeah, it's. It's coming up on our screen.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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

[Tynia Gaither]

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.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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.

[Tynia Gaither]

I thought it was an error.

[Commentator]

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

[Tynia Gaither]

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

[Commentator]

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

[Tynia Gaither]

The crowd was like, no, no, like, you didn't fall.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Starred crowd don't like it.

[Tynia Gaither]

They was like, protest, protest. No, you didn't do anything. And then I was like, okay, no, I'd like to protest.

[Commentator]

Okay, so this might take a little while.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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

[Tynia Gaither]

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

[Commentator]

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

[Tynia Gaither]

Literally looked like I did nothing wrong.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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

[Tynia Gaither]

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.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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

[Tynia Gaither]

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.

[Commentator]

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.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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

[Tynia Gaither]

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

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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

[Tynia Gaither]

There was no guessing in my start. My coach trains us to wait until we hear the start. 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.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Tainia 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.095 second seconds after the gun.

[Commentator]

She's right in the center of your picture in the white.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Yep.

[Commentator]

It's very, very, very marginal.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

And then it happened to Devon Allen, who started 099 seconds after the gun. And he is faster than that tenth of a second allowance.

[Brian Resnik]

You know how much faster he is by one thousandth of a second.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

I just saw the start official say, I'm sorry, 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.

[Commentator]

I really don't like seeing people disqualified. Having said that, rules are rules, aren't they?

[Tynia Gaither]

You're right, but I just couldn't understand what they were saying.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

I'm Noam Hassenfeld, and this week on Unexplainable. How fast can humans react? And is a rule like this actually fair? Okay. Brian Nom. There's this rule in running that we've both been thinking about for a while.

[Brian Resnik]

Yeah.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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?

[Brian Resnik]

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

[Mathieu Meloz]

There is a neurophysiological limit that need to be defined to prevent some athletes to have an unfair advantage by Anticipating the gun.

[Brian Resnik]

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

[Mathieu Meloz]

My name is Mathieu Miroz.

[Brian Resnik]

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, right? There's so many things that need to happen just to get you out of the starting blocks.

[Mathieu Meloz]

There is like different component to the response time.

[Brian Resnik]

So first the gun goes off. There's time it takes for that sound of the gun to get into your ears. So there is the time your ears have to convert that stimulus into a neural signal. Then there is the time your nervous system has to identify that signal, 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.

[Mathieu Meloz]

And then there is.

[Brian Resnik]

The time, like you actually exerting force on the starting blocks that would detect your movement.

[Mathieu Meloz]

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

[Brian Resnik]

So this idea of a limit in sprinting makes sense. But what I just cannot figure out is where this number 10th of a second, where does that come from?

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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.

[Brian Resnik]

Okay.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

His name is PJ Vesel, and he told me that it actually traces all the way back to the 60s. And this West German sprinter named Armin Hari.

[Brian Resnik]

He had surging power and explosive pace, but he also possessed the most dubious style starting technique that international sprinting has ever seen.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Hari was famous for being a suspiciously fast starter.

[Brian Resnik]

His fellow Germans called him the thief of starts.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

He did apparently have a really fast reaction time. They tested him, though we don't know exactly how accurate that was. Many believe he actually beats the gun. Ultimately, we don't know if Hari was guessing his starts or if he just had superhuman reflexes. But in 1960, he, he won a bunch of races, got called for some false starts, and people were pissed because back then you didn't get immediately disqualified for your first false start. They would just run the race again.

[Brian Resnik]

Oh, okay.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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

[Brian Resnik]

The traditional brand. Jum Hans has been a trailblazer in.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Watch design for 160 years. That said that they had tested a bunch of runners and found that no one could start faster than a tenth of a second.

[Brian Resnik]

Okay.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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.

[Brian Resnik]

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

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Right.

[Brian Resnik]

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

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Yeah, basically.

[Brian Resnik]

Okay.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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 tenth of a second was determined to be the, quote, minimum auditory reaction time. But they didn't point to a specific study.

[Brian Resnik]

Okay.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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.

[Brian Resnik]

Okay. So this whole story you're telling me makes perfect sense, considering when I asked Matthieu about this number, like, do you think it's valid?

[Mathieu Meloz]

He told me the 100 millisecond false start threshold is not science based.

[Brian Resnik]

He argues that this tenth of a second limit is just not based in rigorous science. Okay. 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. Matt Chew says he's even found this in his own work.

[Mathieu Meloz]

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

[Brian Resnik]

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, correct firm number here.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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.

[Brian Resnik]

Oh, so they know this.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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

[Brian Resnik]

So do a better study.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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

[Brian Resnik]

When I asked met you about this, he explained it. It's 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.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Like a startle response or something.

[Brian Resnik]

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.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

It's like a. It's like a spring being coiled up or something. Yeah.

[Brian Resnik]

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.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

So if this tenth 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?

[Brian Resnik]

So I asked Matthew this question and.

[Mathieu Meloz]

He said if I give you a number, I will kind of lie to you.

[Brian Resnik]

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 what is allowed. But then again, Matthieu 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, Met you thinks it's important to get a better range of what the limit could be because the victories here can be decided by hundredths thousandth of a second.

[Mathieu Meloz]

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

[Brian Resnik]

Met you basically thinks that improving on this number and getting a better estimate of it will really make races fairer.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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

[Brian Resnik]

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

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Okay.

[Brian Resnik]

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

[Noam Hassenfeld]

So not amateurs anymore?

[Brian Resnik]

Yeah, not using amateurs.

[Mathieu Meloz]

Top level sprinters react quicker than you and me.

[Brian Resnik]

It turns out on the track, like 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.

[Mathieu Meloz]

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

[Brian Resnik]

That's why he wants to bring them to the lab and say, okay, 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. Where we can better decide on where the limit is.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Okay.

[Brian Resnik]

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

[Noam Hassenfeld]

What do you mean?

[Brian Resnik]

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

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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. Yeah, yeah.

[Mathieu Meloz]

They push on the floor first.

[Brian Resnik]

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

[Mathieu Meloz]

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.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

So that's like a huge difference.

[Brian Resnik]

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

[Noam Hassenfeld]

So that all sounds great.

[Brian Resnik]

Okay.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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

[Brian Resnik]

Isn't the answer usually more science? We need more science. Don't we say that on the show?

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Like everybody, 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.

[Brian Resnik]

Oh, I want to hear that.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

I'll tell you after the break. So he yells out, ready, on your mark. Get set.

[Brian Resnik]

And I was so keyed up, I just took off.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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

[Commentator]

Said, and, yeah, the four 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 championships.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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.

[Brian Resnik]

So they're not saying anything?

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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.

[Brian Resnik]

Yeah. Like, what are the options here?

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Okay, so on the one hand, we've got Matthieu, 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, you know, firmly into the realm of science, rigorous science, like you said.

[Brian Resnik]

Yeah.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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.

[Brian Resnik]

Yeah.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

So, you know, we can hold them accountable.

[Brian Resnik]

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

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Right. And that's actually what some people think happened at the world Championships with Tynea 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.

[Brian Resnik]

Yeah.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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.

[Brian Resnik]

Yeah. And the limit is always gonna be a fuzzy number anyway.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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?

[Brian Resnik]

I don't know.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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

[Joe Posnanski]

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

[Noam Hassenfeld]

So I talked to this sports writer, Joe Posnanski. 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 sports, which are ultimately, they're games, right. They're not scientific experiments.

[Joe Posnanski]

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.

[Brian Resnik]

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, right?

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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

[Joe Posnanski]

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

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Throw down by Martin, a stolen base for Rios. So as long as you're touching the base, you're safe.

[Brian Resnik]

That's the one thing I know about baseball.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Right. That's the main rule of baseball.

[Joe Posnanski]

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

[Noam Hassenfeld]

For a fraction of a second, for just a moment, watch this.

[Joe Posnanski]

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

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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

[Commentator]

It's happened many times in replay.

[Joe Posnanski]

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

[Noam Hassenfeld]

And they stop the game for like.

[Joe Posnanski]

A while, you know, Instead it becomes this. People just poring over it like it's the Zapruder film, trying to figure out, is this guy safe? Is this guy out? Isn't that great?

[Brian Resnik]

You know, I'm realizing that 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.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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

[Brian Resnik]

Yes.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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

[Brian Resnik]

This is a little. I think we got a little too deep for this topic, but I see what you mean in that, like, there's always going to be, like, the closer you zoom into things. You see, actually our experience of that thing, like touching a base is not necessarily what's happening on a microscopic view.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Yeah. And it's not just baseball either. Like in basketball, there are these endless replay reviews on fouls. I get so bored of these replays you got a great game going. Again, it's a gray area of, like, what is a foul? Is that an offensive foul or. I don't know. And then in football, there's this kind of, like, deeply philosophical issue of what is a catch?

[Brian Resnik]

What?

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Yeah, like, it used to be it's in your hands. Yeah. It seems like this really simple idea, like, are you holding the ball? But now it's like the runner did not complete the catch during the process of the catch.

[Brian Resnik]

Okay.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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

[Brian Resnik]

Like, even though it's in your hands?

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Even though it's in your hands, and even though, like, it was always considered a catch before, and you've got to continue through the play. We will now review the previous play. 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.

[Brian Resnik]

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

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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.

[Brian Resnik]

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

[Noam Hassenfeld]

So I think there's a couple 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.

[Brian Resnik]

Yeah.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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 in other people.

[Brian Resnik]

You're introducing yet another complication to when does a race start?

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Yeah. And we could also, like, keep these pressure sensors, but just get rid of this tenth 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.

[Brian Resnik]

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.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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.

[Brian Resnik]

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

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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.

[Brian Resnik]

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

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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.

[Brian Resnik]

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

[Noam Hassenfeld]

I think that's exactly right. And that's something that Joe said to me. He basically said, there's no way to.

[Joe Posnanski]

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.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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.

[Brian Resnik]

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

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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

[Brian Resnik]

Yeah.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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.

[Tynia Gaither]

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

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Tynea is still thinking about her false start at the World Championships in July when officials said she started before hearing the gun.

[Tynia Gaither]

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

[Noam Hassenfeld]

For a while it was hard to shake.

[Tynia Gaither]

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 true lovers of this sport. I love what I do. And you know, as big of a blow as that was, it hasn't changed my eagerness to step on the line.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

And last month in August, she was back on the blocks at another big race, Brittney Brown, followed closely by Tania Gates. 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 told her about our reporting and all the people we've talked to. I guess it doesn't seem to me like you cheated.

[Tynia Gaither]

Yes, that's how I feel. But I guess the data says I cheated.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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

[Tynia Gaither]

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

[Brian Resnik]

This episode was reported and produced by Noam Hassenfeld and me, Brian Resnik. It was edited by Meredith Hadinot and Catherine Wells. Noam wrote the music, Efim Shapiro did the mixing and sound design, and Serena Solon checked the facts. Mandy Nguyen is growing magic beans in her backyard. Christian Ayala 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 Vesel, 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. We're unexplainableox.com we'd also love it if you wrote us a review or rating. Unexplainable is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network and we'll be back next week.