Tom Obrien, who was monitoring the infield camera during last Sunday’s virtual dead heat in the women’s 100m hurdles final at the IAAF World Under-20 Championships in Tampere, Finland, thinks they got the correct decision in giving the victory to American Tia Jones over Jamaica’s Britany Anderson.

Both athletes were given the same time of 13.01 seconds (-0.1m/s) and also had the identical .002 when the time was taken down to the millisecond (1/1000th of a second), with the stadium announcer saying the timing system had been reduced to 10/1000th of a second.

It was the second-straight IAAF championships during which a Jamaican athlete came out on the wrong end of a photo finish, after Anthony Cox was given fourth place when he ran the exact same time of 46.77 seconds as the Turks and Caicos’ Colby Jennings in the 400m final at the Under-18 championships in Nairobi, Kenya.

A day after the end of the championships in Tampere, Finland, Obrien, who was working for Seiko — the official timekeepers — and who also worked at the IAAF World Under-18 Championships in Nairobi, Kenya, told the Jamaica Observer that there was “an obvious gap” on the image they saw to give the edge to the American.

“We have a way of reading the results.” He said. “You place the curser on the image and it generates a line across the chest of the athletes, and we did that for both athletes — the American and the Jamaican — and it showed that the American’s chest was in front,” he said.

Two cameras are used, one on the infield and another across the track, but the Briton said he only read the infield one and said he was not familiar with the IAAF rules or what the millisecond reading meant, as that was the job of the photo finish judge. His job was only to produce the image.

“I did not make any decision one way or the other,” he said several times. “That was not my responsibility.”

The decision to award the gold medal to the American stirred a storm of controversy — especially among Jamaican track and field coaches and fans, many saying that given the results published, they should have shared the gold medal

Anderson, who had the slowest reaction to the starter’s gun, ran a brilliant race to catch the fast-starting American a step before the line as, both women hit the line at virtually the same time.

Both athletes, the rest of the field, officials, spectators and journalists had to wait for what seemed an eternity, in track and field terms, for the decision to be flashed on the many monitors around the stadium.

The Jamaican delegation immediately launched an appeal and, according to Obrien, the Jamaican officials were satisfied with the ruling of the photo finish judges and the other officials who were part of the proceedings.

— Paul Reid