Something which the tied two-man bobsleigh event at the Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang on Monday (February 19) once again demonstrated.

What are the odds on two crews finishing four separate runs down a 1,376.38 metre course in a combined time equal to within one hundredth of a second?

Well obviously I have no idea, but we can all surely agree that it is highly unlikely.

Yet on Monday evening it happened. With the German pair of Francesco Friedrich and Thorsten Margis leaders in the clubhouse, the Canadian crew of Justin Kripps and Alex Kopacz, who had led into the final round, looked briefly as if they were going to finish ahead of the Germans, and then briefly as if they weren’t, before crossing the line with the same combined time of  3min 16.86sec.

Stats first.  This was an unlikely turn of events, but not an unprecedented one. Twenty years earlier, at Nagano 1998, Canada had been involved in another tie for gold in the two-man bobsleigh, this time with Italy.

Twenty years before that, at the Winter Olympics in Grenoble, the Italian and West German crews in the two-man bob finished with identical combined times, and were initially deemed to have shared gold before the judges decided, in their infinite wisdom, to make the fastest single run recorded into a tie-breaker - which meant gold went solely to Italy.

This was the ninth time at a Winter Games that two gold medals were awarded for a single event although, as Olympicstats.com is careful to point out, one of these awards came not after a tie but an appeal. Following the controversial award of gold to the Russian ice dance pair at Salt Lake City 2002, an additional gold was given to the Canadian pair whom many believed should have been adjudged winners.

The other awards have come as a result of ties. The first three were in men’s speed skating, for the 1928 500 metres, the 1956 1500m and the 1960 1500m. Then came the 1972 luge men’s double, the 1998 two-man bob, the 2002 men’s cross-country skiing pursuit, and the two-man bob at Pyeongchang 2018. 

The site additionally lists 11 ties for silver and seven for bronze at the Winter Games. In 1968 three US female speed skaters tied for silver in the 500m.

At the Summer Olympics, meanwhile, Olympicstats noted in 2014 that two or more gold medals had been awarded on 26 occasions, and Rio 2016 provided another instance as United States swimmer Simone Manuel and Canada's Penny Oleksiak claimed joint gold in the women's 100m freestyle final.

A day later, by the by, Michael Phelps of the US, Chad Le Clos of South Africa and László Cseh of Hungary shared silver in the men’s 100m butterfly.

In the wake of the latest Olympic dead-heat, a number of observers and participants suggested that it would only be a matter of timing before bobsleigh followed luge in registering results to within thousandths of a second.

When you start to get down to that kind of measurement, however, it starts also to raise questions about effectiveness and fairness.

Shortly before London 2012 got underway I was with a press group that visited the Aquatics Centre to meet Peter Huerzeler, the former President of Omega overseeing the timing operation.

In the decade or so before the Games, swimming had had numerous dead heats. At the previous year’s World Championships in Shanghai, for instance, golds had been shared in the men’s 100m backstroke and women’s 100m freestyle.

In London 2012, for the first time in an Olympics, the timing at the Aquatics Centre was dealt with by equipment capable of discerning differences of one ten thousandth of a second.

Indeed, as Huerzeler avowed enthusiastically as he stood poolside amid the boom and splash of a pool filled with preparing Olympians of all nations, the technology was already available to measure even more minute fractions of time: "We have the technology for one millionth of a second. But what is the use?" he said.

It is part of the requirement of international sporting timing systems that they can provide data at a level beyond what is required for the purposes of competition.

But then, and now, swimming remains on hundredths but not thousands. Thus nobody knew what the big numbers were for the likes of 2011 backstroke dead-heaters Camille Lacourt and Jeremy Stravius, or Aliaksandra Herasimenia of Romania and Jeanette Otessen of Denmark, who shared gold in the women’s 100m freestyle.

No one except Huerzeler, that is. And he could still tell you. But then he would have to kill you.

"At Shanghai, all the journalists came to me and asked who was really the winner in the men’s 100 freestyle," he said. "But I never give away that information because it is unfair against the swimmers. I am the only man who knows - and I will never tell to the journalists."

The problem with introducing thousandths of seconds in the swimming results, as he explained, comes down to this: one thousandth of a second is equivalent to around 1.7 millimetres, and as most pools are built to a tolerance of up to one centimetre, who is to say whether each swimmer swims an exactly similar distance?

"We can only use thousandths of a second when we can guarantee that each lane in the pool is exactly the same length," Huerzeler said. "Otherwise it is not feasible."

Athletics retains that option, however.  One of the highest profile instances was the women’s 100m final at 1996 Olympics in Atlanta where  Merlene Ottey of Jamaica and Gail Devers of the United States both recorded 10.94sec, but the American was given gold by five thousandths of a second.

Extraordinarily the two women had dead-heated over 100m three years earlier at the IAAF World Championships in Stuttgart, when Devers had been given gold by one-thousandth of a second, 10.811 to 10.812. It could not have been closer.

At this point you are on the edge of fairness. Were those lanes exactly the same length? Was there any slight variation in wind that might have affected the result?

Earlier today I got an email from Dr Danny Daniels, past vice-chair of Athletics Canada and the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) Masters Committee who asked: "In athletics - why do we award a gold medal to a 'winner' in the 100m based upon the difference of 1000ths of a second?  Sure, we can measure 1/1000ths of a second, but why should we?  Merely because we can?? 

"It's a fractional time difference that defeats both the human eye - and logic.  Only electronically with the most sophisticated equipment can it be done - but is that in the best interest of the sport?  Other than using equipment that costs a fortune (to the benefit of a commercial sponsor), we could not possibly differentiate between the first and second person to cross the finishing line."

It could indeed be argued that athletics, and other sports, might do better to agree that, once you get to a certain point, it is a better idea simply to agree on a tie. That, memorably, happened at the 1982 Commonwealth Games in Brisbane, when England’s Mike McFarlane and Scotland’s Olympic 100m champion Allan Wells both clocked 20.43 in the 200m final. The judges did not have the facility for measuring times to a third decimal point, and could find no evidence to separate them on the photographic evidence.

So both men stood atop the rostrum, and as the crowd acclaimed them, Wells grabbed McFarlane’s arm and raised it above his head.

There was a similar feeling of warmth at the 2014 IAAF World Indoor Championships in Sopot, where Russia’s Maria Kuchina - now Lasitskene - and home athlete Kamila Licwinko shared the top spot on the podium. Having cleared 2.00 metres first time, both failed at 2.02m, as did Ruth Beitia of Spain. The Spaniard’s failure to clear 2.00m first time meant she could do no better than a bronze medal, but rather than engage in a jump-off to settle the final result, the Pole and the Russian simply agreed to call it a day and share.

If hugging were an Olympic event, both two-man bob crews would have been awarded double gold on Monday night. But such moments of emotion offer an enduring reminder of a meaning to sport that is higher even than the top step of a podium. 

And should such moments become impossible on future occasions, sport would be the poorer for it.