Life is unfair, and so are racing sports: some athletes can randomly benefit from alerting effects due to inconsistent starting procedures by Dalmaijer, E, Nijenhuis, B, Van der Stigchel, S

“…Here we argue that subtle differences between athletes’ starts can bias the competition, and demonstrate this in the results of speed skating at the 2010 Winter Olympics. This bias could be removed by simple alterations to current starting procedures. …”