Unfair Advantages

Kottke's got an interesting post here.

The Olympic starting gun gives the runners on the inside of the track (near the gun) an unfair advantage because the sound reaches the outer lanes later and the loud bang scares inside-lane runners out of the blocks earlier.

Runners in lane eight got off the mark on average about 150 milliseconds after runners in lane one, Dapena found. A time delay of that magnitude translates to about a metre's difference at the finish line.

I wonder if the lineup is randomly or alphabetical or what. In theory, should be able to test the degree to which this matters.