Hummingbirds, Milliseconds, and Keirin Finishes

[Darell C. Provencher]

Santiago, Chile is world-famous for its diverse species of hummingbirds. Surrounded by the foothills of the Andes Mountains, this region is home to about 10 species. Typical small hummingbirds can hover at a blurring wing flap  rate of 80 wing flaps per second. Each second is equal to 1000 milliseconds, or 100 hundredths of a second.

This past week, Santiago was host to  another world-famous attraction, the 133rd running of the UCI Track World Championships. Across all the decades of velodrome track racing, the timing clock has held center stage for riders and fans alike. Often, in time trial events, and qualifying 200m TT’s for sprints, and qualifying rounds for mass-start and keirin events, the modern-day electronic timing clock is able to measure finishes to an accuracy of  1/1000th of a second.

The good side of this accuracy – if you win by 1/1000th sec in  a TT, or a qualifying heat, or make the cut for reaching the next round of your event, you are elated and/or relieved! The bad side – 1/1000th of a second difference just slammed the door on you. For most elite athletes, even losing buy a couple of hundredths of a second often still feels the same as one thousandth of a second. A loss is a loss for the athlete. For a fan, watching an amazingly close photo-finish is very difficult to judge accurately with the human eye.

Now back to the hummingbirds, and the UCI Track World Championships.  Probably the most close and dramatic finish during the 2025 UCI World Track Championships was Heat 3 of the  First Round Repechage of the Women’s Keirin.  It was a roaring three riders-wide photo finish, with M in the sprinters lane, Lauren Bell from Great Britain battling on her right, and Alla Biletska from Ukraine above. All photos available show the three just after crossing the finish line. The riders finishing first and second moved on to the quarterfinals. McKenna placed third, just 0.019 seconds (or 19 milliseconds) behind Bell. That’s just 1 ½ wing flaps from one of the small species of hummingbirds in Santiago. You can’t see that one and a half wing flap with your eyes. But the clock knows.

Like nearly all of the great, gritty, elite athletes in the world arena, McKenna pushes forward, forgetting the loss itself, and taking home more lessons learned. This is how the elite athlete improves and gets smarter,  as she moves closer to her performance goals. We’re proud of you M! Welcome back home!

 

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