Tokyo Olympics: Opening night of swimming marred by embarrassing hiccups

The unusual odds of having dead-heats in two consecutive races involving three Australian swimmers has sparked concern of issues at the pool.

Emma McKeon dead-heated in her opening race. Picture: Alex Coppel

The Wi-Fi was dodgy – even the cabled internet connections failed to work – the loudspeaker system was silent for the first couple of races and the results system providing a summary of events has been non existent, in a series of embarrassing hiccups at the Tokyo Olympics aquatics centre.

The unusual odds of having lanes four and five dead-heat in two consecutive races involving three Australian swimmers, was also another anomaly that sent the timekeepers checking the overhead camera angles and underwater photo finishes.

While the first session of a major meet is a time to smooth out teething problems, the organisation of this postponed Olympics was struggling even without the usual pressures of a full stadia, scores of VIP’s and a full contingent of media.

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This was declared a dead heat.

A FINA official told NewsCorp “there is nothing wrong with the timing”.

He said that McKeon had finished the race with “a light touch”, essentially gliding into the wall. Under the rules the swimmer has to apply a certain amount of pressure to the touch pad to activate the time.

As for the coincidence of a dead-heat in the very next race involving the same lane four and five, swum by Elijah Winnington and Jack McLoughlin, in an event that rarely posts same times, it was suggested that they had been pacing off each other and so touched at the same moment.

Early swimmers in the 400m individual medley were not even introduced and they went to the start blocks as if they were in a school carnival – without the atmosphere of screeching children.

The media arrangements have been particularly poor. Journalist numbers, which have already been heavily filtered out through a 24 hour booking system and pre-approval – and for the finals the need to obtain a special entry ticket – were then forced to queue for up to two hours to obtain a limited mixed zone ticket.

This system is to continue for each of the ongoing sessions, meaning some people will be queuing for up to four hours a day.

This mixed zone ticket is to provide access to swimmers, across a social distance barrier, to get comments about their performance. Usually in this area, in the bowels of the building, the journalists are able to watch the racing on television so that they can they pose their questions accordingly.

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But for the first time in 30 years, organisers hadn’t even provided such broadcast access.

FINA press commissioner Greg Eggert said of the problems: ‘’it is a colossal embarrassment”. He said the organisers knew about the problems before the session started. Eggert said the mixed zone broadcast issue was because of a ‘’gremlin’’ somewhere, but added “we have never had anything like this before”.

Originally published as Tokyo Olympics: Opening night of swimming marred by embarrassing hiccups