So started one of the crucial inscrutable selections 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 at this time, 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 couple of half-second shy of Devitt’s world report. All three timers in Devitt’s lane had him at 55.2.

“Everyone down there advised me I had gained,” Mr. Larson advised 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 totally 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. The US and others mentioned the rule e book held the answer. In case of such a battle, they mentioned, the instances would determine the winner. As a substitute, 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 after I realized 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. Photographs 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 in the course of 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 regardless that West Germany was seen as a part of the Western camp within the Chilly Conflict 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 recent out of Solomons.”

On the medal ceremony, Mr. Larson accepted the silver with a pinched grin. Devitt regarded down from the gold medal spot, vigorously applauding Mr. Larson. Brazil’s Manuel dos Santos took third.

“I feel,” Mr. Larson advised the New York Occasions, “John [Devitt] has needed to dwell with the sensation for a few years that he most likely didn’t actually win that gold medal.” (Devitt died in August 2023.)

The reverberations from Mr. Larson’s grievance additionally swept by way 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 techniques had been in broad 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 techniques 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 america.

Lance Melvin Larson was born in Monterey Park, Calif., on July 3, 1940. His dad and mom owned a dairy farm and later a gasoline station, the place the younger Lance labored. He began swimming to clean away the grime.

In highschool, he started breaking swimming data, turning 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 the earth to interrupt one minute within the 100-meter butterfly, setting a world report 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 led to divorce. In 1997, he married the previous Sherrie Powell, who confirmed the demise however offered no particular trigger. Survivors embody 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. staff set a brand new world report of 4:05.4.

After the awards ceremony, Mr. Larson posed for photographers and kissed his gold medal.