It's a sport where a fraction of a second can mean waving from the podium or going home empty handed, and new research suggests the pistol that sets its gears in motion tends to pick favourites.
Researchers at the University of Alberta have found that track runners positioned in lanes closer to the starter's gun have a better chance of winning the race. The report's co-author, Dave Collins, said the abrupt noise of the gun causes a startle response, subconsciously propelling runners ahead.
"The signal basically goes from the ear down to the spinal cord and you react sooner," Collins said. "By bypassing all that processing in the brain you're saving yourself time."
Canadian sprinter Tyler Christopher is all too familiar with the phenomenon.
He said he couldn't hear the start gun at all from his position in an outer lane at last year's Pan American Games in Brazil. Although he did manage to clinch the silver, he spent the race playing catch-up.
"That definitely cost me the gold. Everyone else heard the gun but I didn't," Christopher said. "I think that's kind of ridiculous seeing as a race can be won within a hundredth of a second."
In 2005, Collins' fellow researcher and co-author Alex Brown was working on an undergrad project focusing on false starts in racing. He was sorting reaction times of runners in the 2004 Olympics by lane when he inadvertently noticed athletes in Lane 1 were consistently faster off the line. And the phenomenon wasn't just restricted to Lane 1 - times increased through to Lane 8.
"Our study kind of shifted gears and we started looking at what was giving them this advantage," Brown said.
The pair then gathered 12 untrained volunteers and four trained sprinters to test the startle idea. They found that participants reacted more quickly with each incremental raise of the start signal volume. Raising the sound level from 80 to 120 decibels dropped the reaction time an average of 18 milliseconds.
Collins and Brown concluded that those in Lane 1 are given a clear advantage by hearing the start pistol at a greater volume.
"I was just shocked," Brown said. "I think it surprises a lot of sprinters and coaches because this is something that hasn't been mentioned publicly."
As Christopher trains for the Beijing Olympics, his coach Kevin Tyler said the new study reinforces the fact that the start needs to be fair.
"Tyler lost six metres in that race and ultimately that cost him a gold medal," said Tyler, who's also the director of the Canadian Athletics Coaching Centre.
Preventing situations like Tyler's is exactly what Brown, now a dental student, hopes will come from the study. The report recommends that Olympic officials remove loud starting pistols form sprint events entirely. In their place, Brown and Collins suggest a tone be played through speakers behind each individual runner. This sort of system is already in place at the world championships.
"They account for wind and they account for all these different variables but something that seems so obvious was not really looked at before."
