"Faster, Higher, Stronger" -
the unimpeachable motto of the Olympic Games.
Yet for Lance Larson, a 20-year-old American swimmer
at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome,
being fastest didn't necessarily translate
into gold.
The story of why that was so
remains one of the most controversial
in Olympic Games history
because, in 1960,
for all the stopwatches, timekeepers and cameras,
you still had to convince the judges
that you were the winner too,
and that was something Larson couldn't quite manage to do.
10,000 fans flocked
to the spectacular swimming arena
in Rome that night,
the first weekend action of the Games.
Two of the sport's brightest stars
were ready to shine
beneath the open skies.
Larson had clocked
the fastest time in the heats.
His closest challenger
was John Devitt of Australia.
Everyone knew it was head-to-head
between Devitt and Larson
for the gold.
With all eyes on the middle two lanes,
the Brazilian, Manuel dos Santos, in lane six,
flew into a healthy lead down the first 50 metres.
Dos Santos led at the turn,
but Devitt and Larson were just getting started.
Devitt hauled himself into the lead,
but Larson carved himself
through the water too
and pulled alongside his great rival.
The two men touched the wall.
Everyone seemed to agree, Larson had edged it.
But an official told him it wasn't the case.
Here was the problem.
In 1960, there were three timekeepers
at the end of every lane,
measuring the time of each swimmer.
The three stopwatches
measuring Devitt were all agreed.
The three stopwatches recording Larson
were only slightly different.
The rules state that if two times were the same,
that was official.
Larson was one tenth of a second quicker than Devitt.
But the swimming authorities of 1960
didn't believe the instruments.
They had judges too, 24 of them,
12 in each side of the pool,
whose job it was to decide
who finished first.
This was much closer.
Three judges were asked
who they thought finished first.
Two said Devitt and one said Larson.
Then three judges were asked
who they thought finished second.
Two said Devitt.
One said Larson.
Six judges - three thought Devitt won, three said Larson.
It was a dead heat.
The rules said that ties like this
should have sent the officials to the timing machine.
But instead, the chief judge,
Hans Runstromer of Germany, stepped in.
Runstromer said that both Devitt and Larson
should be given the same time,
but that Devitt alone was champion.
The American team appealed.
It was thrown out,
but the incident had shaken the sport to its core.
The Olympic Committee decided
to replace those fallible humans
with electronic sensors.
By 1968, stopwatches and judges
were a thing of the past in the pool.
And 40 years later,
the greatest Olympic swimmer of all time
was very grateful for that.
In 2008, US swimmer Michael Phelps
was on course for the best Olympic Games performance
ever achieved by an individual.
He was going for a seventh gold medal of the Games
in the 100 metres butterfly.
Standing in the way was Serbia's Milorad Cavic,
who was not interested in the Phelps fairy tale.
And is it Cavic or Phelps?
It's too close to call.
It's Phelps by one one-hundredth of a second.
Gold medal number seven.
Phelps went on to win eight gold medals in Beijing,
breaking Mark Spitz's record.
It was one of the greatest Olympic Games stories
ever written, and perhaps that story owes a credit
to John Devitt and Lance Larson.
Neither man would return to the Olympic Games,
but the legacy of their famous race lives on.
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