So started one of the inscrutable choices in Olympics historical past because the gold went to Devitt, setting off years of protests and appeals by U.S. swimming officers and serving to speed up the introduction of digital timing to take away the potential variables of human fallibility.
“It was a nasty deal,” mentioned Mr. Larson, who died Jan. 19 at age 83 in Orange, Calif.
What occurred in Rome stays, even right now, a baffling cascade of rulings and questions over judging protocols. In swimming occasions in these days, the crews who timed races — three folks assigned to every lane — had been separate from the judges who formally declared the ending ranks.
Mr. Larson was clocked at 55.0, 55.1 and 55.1 seconds — a few half-second shy of Devitt’s world document. All three timers in Devitt’s lane had him at 55.2.
“Everyone down there informed me I had received,” Mr. Larson informed reporters after the race. For almost 10 minutes, the greater than 10,000 spectators at Rome’s Stadio Olimpico del Nuoto additionally believed that Mr. Larson had the gold. Then got here indicators of discord. The judges who determine the ending order didn’t absolutely agree with the timers.
The three first-place judges had Devitt as winner by a 2-1 vote. However the second-place judges additionally had Devitt as runner-up, 2-1. America and others mentioned the rule guide held the answer. In case of such a battle, they mentioned, the instances would determine the winner. As an alternative, the chief decide on the occasion, Hans Runströmer of West Germany, stepped in.
Runströmer ordered that Mr. Larson’s time be modified to 55.2, tying with Devitt, then decreed that the Australian had nudged forward to take the gold. The American coaches had been furious. Mr. Larson was in a daze. “I used to be sick once I discovered the race had been given to Devitt,” he mentioned later.
Runströmer was unyielding, saying he had a transparent view of who touched the wall first. Images and video, nevertheless, confirmed Runströmer almost half a pool size from the lanes assigned to Devitt and Mr. Larson. To stoke additional doubts about Runströmer’s claims, the lights on the stadium had been dimmed for dramatic impact throughout the race, one of many marquee occasions in Olympic swimming.
To some within the U.S. swimming federation, the choice smacked of anti-American bias though West Germany was seen as a part of the Western camp within the Chilly Struggle sports activities showdowns. Regardless, U.S. officers argued that Runströmer had trampled the principles together with his unilateral determination.
The appeals fell flat with the Worldwide Olympic Committee and swimming’s worldwide governing physique, FINA (now World Aquatics). Runströmer’s ruling stood. As a New York Herald Tribune story famous: “This required a Solomon, and the Worldwide Swimming Federation was contemporary out of Solomons.”
On the medal ceremony, Mr. Larson accepted the silver with a pinched grin. Devitt appeared down from the gold medal spot, vigorously applauding Mr. Larson. Brazil’s Manuel dos Santos took third.
“I believe,” Mr. Larson informed the New York Instances, “John [Devitt] has needed to reside with the sensation for a few years that he in all probability didn’t actually win that gold medal.” (Devitt died in August 2023.)
The reverberations from Mr. Larson’s grievance additionally swept by means of swimming and the broader reaches of aggressive sports activities.
An experimental — but unofficial — digital timing system was utilized in Rome’s swimming occasions, clocking Mr. Larson at 55.10 and Devitt at 55.16. No matter lingering resistance existed over digital timing started to crumble.
By the 1968 Olympic Video games, each winter and summer season, digital timing methods had been in huge use, together with an insulted contact pad for swimming occasions developed by Invoice Parkinson, a physics professor on the College of Michigan.
4 years later, digital methods proved decisive in a end that, to the human eye, was too near name. On the Munich Video games in 1972, Sweden’s Gunnar Larsson took the gold within the 400-meter particular person medley by a margin of two-thousandths, 4:31.981 to 4:31.983, over Tim McKee of the US.
Lance Melvin Larson was born in Monterey Park, Calif., on July 3, 1940. His mother and father owned a dairy farm and later a gasoline station, the place the younger Lance labored and began swimming to scrub away the grime.
In highschool, he started breaking swimming information, changing into the primary highschool swimmer to complete beneath 50 seconds within the 100-yard freestyle. On the College of Southern California, the 6-foot-1 Mr. Larson was the primary on this planet to interrupt one minute within the 100-meter butterfly, setting a world document mark two instances earlier than the Rome Olympics.
He graduated from USC in 1962 and studied dentistry on the College of the Pacific, getting his diploma in 1964. He enlisted within the Navy’s Dental Corps, and left army service within the late Nineteen Sixties. He later opened a dental observe in Orange, south of Los Angeles.
Mr. Larson’s marriage to Betty Lee Puttler resulted in divorce. In 1997, he married the previous Sherrie Powell, who confirmed the loss of life however supplied no particular trigger. Survivors embrace 4 sons from his first marriage; two adopted daughters from his second marriage; three stepdaughters; and 10 grandchildren.
Even amid the uproar over the 100-meter freestyle outcomes, Mr. Larson managed to succeed in the gold medal podium in Rome. He swam the butterfly leg within the 4×100-meter medley relay, the place the U.S. crew set a brand new world document of 4:05.4.
After the awards ceremony, Mr. Larson posed for photographers and kissed his gold medal.