Sports Section: How Omega Captured the Men’s 100m Final Photo Finish (and the Watch Noah Lyles Wore During His Victory)

Back then, the film moved behind a “slot,” in the same direction as the runner. If the film moved too fast, the runners looked compressed; too slow, the athletes looked like Gumby. In this case, the camera was the Omega Scan’O’Vision Ultimate—an upgrade from the previous 10,000-frame-per-second Scan’O’Vision Myria—which could take up to 40,000 frames per second of the finish line, creating the image you see above. The red lines represent the position officials used to judge which torso reached the line first. This time, the order for the 1-2-3 was Lyles, Thompson, and American Fred Kerley. It was Lyles’ first Olympic gold medal.