Discussion: timing gate

I noticed that on the sprint video feed, particularly from the Swiss. I assume that the competition time starts when the gate is triggered. The only advantage then is that you can start marginally closer to the competitor in front of you and increase the chance of catching them.

Another trend I saw in the World Cups earlier this year was extending the arm out with the EMIT brick as you cross the finish timing line. This seemed logical if the timing device is triggered by the EMIT brick. It looked a bit weird though - a bit like doing a "superman" finish!

I guess these are those 1%'ers that show you which orienteers are trying to extract every last second.

Bruce, you'll need to cultivate those long finger nails then to match many of the more spindly orienteers!

you can't do the arm waving at WOC this year, double light beam so only your body breaking both at the same time will trigger it.

Have to say I can see no good reason why people should be allowed to leave the start early at all - apart from whatever tolerance is needed for instrumental uncertainty (and I find it hard to believe that would be more than 0.5 seconds). While it makes no difference to the elapsed time it does influence, at the margins, the chances of catching someone/being caught.