digital cameras are used to establish the placings. Sometimes, in a race as fast as the 100 m sprint, all eight athletes can be separated by less than half a second. It is not uncommon for two athletes to have exactly the same time recorded without there being a dead heat. The 2008 Summer Olympics saw the introduction of some of the fastest timekeeping equipment yet, with cameras that take photographs 3,000 times a second (compared to 1996, which were 1,000 times per second). Triathlon The 2012 Summer Olympics had a photo finish during a triathlon event in which Nicola Spirig of Switzerland and Lisa Nordén of Sweden finished the race at nearly the same time, but with Spirig ranked first. The Swedish Olympic Committee appealed the ranking. They claimed that the athletes should be ranked as joint winners because it was not clear that Spirig was ahead of Nordén. The camera on the far side of the track could have given additional evidence, but it was malfunctioning. The appeal was rejected and Spirig was declared the winner. This is the first time an Olympic triathlon result was decided on a photo finish. Cycling After a close sprint final in the Men's under-23 road race at the 2010 UCI Road World Championships in Melbourne, the organisers had to declare a dead heat between the two riders finishing just behind race winner Michael Matthews and runner-up John Degenkolb, as they were unable to detect any differences on the images taken from Tissot’s photo finish camera. Therefore the riders Taylor Phinney and Guillaume Boivin were both awarded a bronze medal. In the 2017 Tour de France a difference of 0.0003 seconds was judged by photo finish to separate the winner Marcel Kittel from Edvald Boasson Hagen, second, in the seventh stage of the race on July 7. Motor racing A photo finish is possible in NASCAR. On February 17, 2018, Tyler Reddick beat Elliott Sadler by .0004 seconds to win the PowerShares QQQ 300 race in the NASCAR Xfinity Series. It is the closest finish in NASCAR history. A photo finish has occurred in the NASCAR Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series four times: On July 15, 1995, Butch Miller beat Mike Skinner by .001 seconds to win the Total Petroleum 200. On June 14, 2008, Erik Darnell beat Johnny Benson by .005 seconds to win the Cool City Customs 200. On