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← Spark & Whetstone · The Pool Deck Is a Maths Room

The Timer's Chair

Asked to time a lane on Saturday? Sit here first. Practise pressing as the swimmer touches, then see what a meet does with the touchpad, the buttons and the watch. This teaches the arithmetic, not the rulebook: on the day, your head timer and the referee decide.

Practise a finish

Press “A swimmer is coming”. When the wall shows TOUCH, press the big button as fast as you can. Most people are a little late — that is why meets use pads first.

The Stop button wakes up once a swimmer is coming.

Which time counts?

Type what the lane recorded (seconds, like 31.12 or 1:05.32). Leave a box empty if that device missed.

The backup chain, in order

  1. The touchpad. If it worked, its time is the time.
  2. Three buttons: keep the middle one. One early or late press cannot pull the time.
  3. Two buttons: average them and cut to the hundredth. 31.195 becomes 31.19, never 31.20 — cutting can only make a time quicker, never slower.
  4. A watch is the last resort.
  5. A gap of 0.30 seconds or more between the pad and the backup suggests a missed or soft touch. Say so to the head timer; you do not decide it.

On the lane slip

Write the event, heat and lane, the swimmer’s name as it is on the sheet, and every time you have — watch and buttons — even if the pad worked. Initial it. If something went wrong (a press you missed, a watch you forgot to start), write that too; a gap honestly marked is more use than a guess.

Timers time. You never judge the swim: strokes, turns and starts are for the stroke-and-turn judges and the referee. If a parent asks you about a time, send them to the head timer.

How meets apply these steps varies, and the procedures have changed over the years (the guides note changes around 2011 and 2016). This page follows two practitioner guides: “More than you ever wanted to know about timing at swim meets” and the HY-TEK Meet Manager notes on backup-time averaging. Your presses here stay on this page and are gone when you leave it.