Who won the Amstel Gold Race? Human error in photo-finishes
Is it just me, or is it really obvious that Wout won?https://i.imgur.com/g78YNla.pngEach pixel column is a specific point in time. I added a few landmarks: when the front of the wheel passes the camera view, when the axis of the wheel passes the camera view, and when the end of the wheel passes the camera view. Blue for the top biker (Wout) and green for the bottom biker (Tom).Every single event happened earlier for Wout. Both wheels are the same diameter. Therefore, the entire period where the wheel intersected the camera view, Wout's wheel was ahead. Including the exact period where Wout passed the actual finish line.If Tom would have passed Wout, you would expect that the bottom wheel would be more "squeezed" such that the end of Tom's wheel would have passed the camera line earlier than Wout. Same for the other landmark (centre of wheel).You can add more landmarks if you want (e.g. approximate when the wheel passes for 25% and for 75%), but it should be clear by pure margin that Wout had the lead for the whole duration where the front wheels passed the camera view. Pretty much all the computation in this article was unnecessary.Amstel gold made the good call, though I agree that it was probably more luck.