First Ever ‘Photo Finish’ Tie in US Track and Field

On Saturday night at the United States Olympic trials, sprinters Allyson Felix and Jeneba Tarmoh did something the sport had never seen before: tie on camera. Both runners crossed the finished line at exactly 11.068 seconds — see the photo above — and not even the high speed camera capturing 3,000 frames per second at the sideline could reveal a difference. Since this situation had never happened before, US Track and Field didn’t have any rule in place for how to deal with it. 24 hours later, they created a new rule: the athletes would be given the choice of breaking the tie with a coin toss or runoff, with runoff being the default if the athletes disagreed.