2023 EUROPEAN JUNIOR SWIMMING CHAMPIONSHIPS
- Tuesday, July 4th – Sunday, July 9th
- Sports and Recreational Center “Milan Gale Muškatirović”, Belgrade, Serbia
- Prelims at 10am local (4am EDT)/Finals at 5pm local (11am EDT)
- LCM (50m)
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At the 2023 European Junior Championships, a time system malfunction necessitated a re-swim of a swim-off between Great Britain’s Callum Melville and Iceland’s Snorri Dagur Einarsson. After tying for 8th in the semi-final of the 50 breaststroke (28.51), they came back to race each other at the end of the session to see who would get a spot in the A final.
It was a close race during semi-final #1 and the two boys touched almost exactly at the same time. In the wake of their finish, both competitors stayed in the lane and waited to see who had touched first according to the scoreboard. No results, however, appeared on the scoreboard, and the two competitors waited at the end of the pool for an update for just over a minute.
Eventually, it was announced that the times from the swim-off had not been recorded and thus, there were no results to determine who had won. The commentator on the Swim Stream live stream on YouTube stated that, without being certain, he believed that Einarsson touched first. You can watch the first swim-off on that live stream with the race beginning at time stamp 2:18.30.
You can also watch the clip of their swim-off, including the photo finish on SwimSwam’s Instagram:
Roughly ten minutes after the scrapped swim-off, Melville and Einarsson made their way back to the starting blocks to contest the 50 breaststroke for a third time during that session. With the timing equipment back up and running, Callum Melville touched first with a time of 28.46 while Einarsson came in just 0.07 seconds later in 28.53. That means that if Einarsson did in fact touch first during the first swim-off, the timing malfunction did impact the results and therefore impacted who will swim in the A final.
Melville will now have a spot in that final and his time of 28.53 was just a touch slower than what he and Einarsson swam in the semi-final (28.51). Eirnarsson won’t get a spot in the A final and will be the first alternate. The final will occur during day two finals on July 5, begging at 5 PM local time, 11 AM Eastern.
1) Swimmers should never be penalized for administrative errors. I hope they used every poor quality piece of information they could have to avoid a second swim off. Starters and referees take order of finish information for these reasons (and old habits die hard).
2) Not sure if buttons/plungers were in use at this meet, but this kind of failure sounds like either a) a busted/disconnected deck harness cable, or b) the timing console never detecting the start (which would make sense if the backup cameras never activated). Timing console operators should manually start the clock if it doesn’t start, and then the total times can be fixed later (e.g. by using stopwatches!). It might be prudent for timing equipment… Read more »
This is disgraceful, and brings back memories of the women’s 100 backstroke reswim a couple years ago. LEN needs to get their crap together.
It wouldn’t have been the devil to get them both into the finals after the malfunction.
The pool has 8 lanes, not 10, so…
Yeah, you’re right.
Good thing it was a 50