The Race That Changed Olympic Swimming | Strangest Moments

The very close medal race between Australia's John Devitt and Team USA's Lance Larson inspired real change in the sport of Swimming. The 100m freestyle swimming gold medal at Rome 1960 was decided by judges in one of the most controversial wins in Olympic Games history.


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[knubbelidoo]

So Larson had the better time on the stopwatches, the judges couldn't decide, then someone gave them the same time but decided that only Devitt should win Gold? Who wasn't ahead on *any* of the deciding means they used? On what grounds?
Seriously, Larson should've sued them. They fucked him over big time.

[rolandojr.antonio]

That decision in 1960 Olympics is so unfair. Larson is the winner. 2 out of the 3 stopwatch indicated that Larson have 10 sec faster than Devitt. That’s the rule, what they will disregard it? That is not right.

[slc]

Man, that was brutal for Larson. Wish the Olympics would rectify this, as it looks pretty clear Larson touched first, and the rules were ignored, with the timer ultimately supposed to decide the winner in the case of a tie by the judges. Larson did get a gold in 1960 as part of the men's relay team, at least.

[Sleepylittlesea]

Larson was wronged. He clearly won, as you can see his hand reaches first at 1:55.

[littlegamer_]

Michael Phelps probably has more Olympic Gold Medals than I do friends

[Olympics]

Hi everyone, we had to make changes to the previous upload, therefore the re-upload. But don't worry we'll have many new stories coming up, also for swimming.

[didrikjohanstonghaugen]

Why wouldn’t they just give both of them Gold? Like they did a couple of days ago in the winter olympics even though Marit Bjoergen was one hundreds of a secound before her opponent they got one bronze medal each

[almadiaoh]

Hahaha!! I keep laughing that woman who lost her balance and just decided to go for it in the beginning. LOL

[RamzaBeoulves]

Phelps has muscles that don't even exist. His body is designed to dominate human sport events.

[coyote]

The most sensible thing to do would have been to declare it a tie and award them each gold medals.

[intldawn]

I still don’t understand how they ended up giving Devitt the gold. The only measure they used back then that showed Devitt won was that two of the judges awarding gold thought he’d won. But two of the judges awarding silver thought Devitt was second. So that metric feels like a wash. At minimum it’s inconclusive and arbitrary. So how do you justify having the chief judge step in and give Devitt the gold? Based on what? At least if they’d given Larson the gold you could argue that there was some concrete evidence he’d won. There’s nothing shown here indicating Devitt won. It just feels so unfair. Larson was probably cheated out of a win and Devitt’s title is forever tarnished by this mess. Sheesh

[ChocManus]

Phelps should give Larson his 8th gold out of kindness

[lazydave]

Wait, so there's 6 people with stopwatches, who ALL agreed that Larson won, and yet he lost?
How?

[LF-hjkk]

3:38 "40 years lasher, the greashest olympic swimmer of all time was greatful for thash"

[christopherx]

Winning by 1/100 of a second is the smallest margin possible these days. In 1972, a race was won with 2/1000 of a second but this difference is so small that the builders of the pool cannot guarantee that they can create lanes of that equal length. That was also a race that changed swimming. (Mens 400 m medley in Munich)

[nonenone]

That was some BS! Both men raced equally well, dude got jipped! Both earn sharing that 1st place honestly!!!

[videogamesTSH]

Yes we are revealing just how corrupt we are

[smfoo]

Just love the motto: Faster, Higher, Stronger.

[Fuzcapp]

The thing with Devitt and Larson was ... (and you can see this in the speed of their stroke rating) - Devitt was considerably shorter than Larson, and Devitt also had notoriously short arms - thus his incredibly high stroke rating - he was like a windmill in a tornado compared to Larson. So at the end, Devitt's head was in front of Larson's head (above the water where the judges could see) while Larson's longer reach had him at least on a par with Devitt on the touch (under the waterline where the judges could not see).
Also - timekeepers were (and are) quite inaccurate, even though the three timekeepers on each lane in this instance, were incredibly consistent. This video is a little deceptive in that it implies times were recorded to the 100th of a second, and with hand-timing in 1960, I don't think they were down to the 100th of a second. (I could be wrong there).
So yeah - they should've been given a dead-heat result: dual gold medalists - or a swim-off????

Swimming officials of that era, and the 70s and 80s, have a dreadful reputation - just ask Dawn Fraser (and Shane Gould - and anyone who swam against the East Germans, Russians and the Chinese women of the 80s ...)

[Jabberstax]

The Paris 2024 opening ceremony should be the subject of a future "Strangest Moments" video. 😂