At 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.

But then, and now, swimming remains on hundredths but not thousands.

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."

I was put in mind of this poolside conversation upon hearing the sad news last Thursday (June 1) that Britain’s former Olympic sprinter and latterly top coach Mike McFarlane had died of a heart attack aged 63.

By the time I began writing regularly about athletics McFarlane had retired as an athlete after a career in which he had earned an Olympic men’s 4x100 metres silver medal at the Seoul Olympics of 1988 as an inspired third-leg runner in a team that also comprised Elliott Bunney, Linford Christie and John Regis.

He had also earned the European indoor 60m title in 1985 as well as outdoor bronze in the 4x100m relay at the 1986 European Championships in Stuttgart.

And in Commonwealth Games competition he completed a full set of medals with 4x100m silver and 100m bronze at the 1986 Edinburgh Games, four years after sharing the men’s 200m title with Scotland’s Allan Wells.

In June 1993 I visited the north London training base from which the ever frank and amiable McFarlane operated, and the object of the exercise was to produce a piece on his erstwhile Seoul relay team-mate Regis, who would go on to win world 200m silver in Stuttgart later that summer.

Training night at Haringey's New River Stadium: one athlete is moving faster than the others. The imprecations of his coach, Mike McFarlane, resound in the cooling air: "Good. Active. Chin! Chin! Chin! Swing your right arm, John. Swing it!"

The T-shirt which John Regis is wearing proclaims: "Super Star". But tonight, for all that he has wintered in California, he is one of the boys, his session shaped by the familiar rhythm which holds all working athletes in its sway: banter, effort, recovery, banter.

Only a small sticking plaster behind his right knee attests to the treatment Regis has received earlier in the day for the injury which had threatened to jeopardise his participation in this weekend's European Cup final.

As he trots back to his blocks, McFarlane apologises to him for an apparent fault in the timing equipment. "Don't worry," Regis says, waving a huge and dismissive arm. "I feel good." Words to make Britain glad.

As well as Regis, McFarlane coached sprinters including double world 110m hurdles silver medallist Tony Jarrett, 1998 Commonwealth 200m champion Julian Golding, Dwain Chambers - until he went Stateside heading towards his high-profile drugs bust - Desiree Henry, Rio 2016 4x100m bronze medallist and Jodie Williams, world youth and junior 100m  champion.

In February 2012 he was appointed as assistant coach to the British women's 4x100m relay squad ahead of their Olympic preparations.

"Coaches like Mac played such an important role in the lives of so many of the boys I grew up in the game with," said Jeanette Kwakye, a world indoor silver medallist in the 60m.

Derek Redmond, one of the British team that earned a shock win over the United States at the 1991 World Championships, added: "As a young athlete coming up through the ranks I remember getting plenty of advice from him.

"He had such a big heart and was part of the big sprint movement this country had in the 80s and 90s.

"We were blessed with some serious world-class sprinters and Mac was a massive part of that.

"Even after retiring from competing, he went on to coach and develop some other top UK sprint talent."

For all his years of coaching and encouraging sprinting talent however McFarlane will probably remain best known for his epic tie with Scotland’s 1980 Olympic 100m champion and 200m silver medallist Wells at the Brisbane Commonwealth Games.

Both clocked 20.43 seconds 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.

Ten years earlier at the Munich 1972 Olympics the world of swimming taught itself a lesson to which it has abided ever since - that is, not to use thousandths of a second to adjudge races.

This resulted from the outrage provoked by their ruling that Sweden’s Gunnar Larsson had beaten Tim McKee of Australia to the men’s 400 metres individual medley title by two thousandths of a second.

Cue the argument about maximum specifications in pool construction:

"I know that the rules changed because of that race," McKee told the Washington Post many years later, "because of the controversy surrounding that race."

Athletics, however, has since availed itself of judging where necessary to three decimal points.

One of the highest profile instances was the women’s 100m final at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics 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.

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?

Thankfully no such minuscule calculation relegated either Wells or McFarlane to the second highest step in Brisbane. So the two men were able to stand atop the rostrum, and as the crowd acclaimed them, Wells grabbed McFarlane’s arm and raised it above his head.

An image to remember amidst the sadness.