Modern technology signals the death of the dead-heat

Did last Tuesday's Melbourne Cup flag the beginning of the end for the dead-heat in horse racing?

When Dunaden and Red Cadeaux fought out the tightest finish in 150 years of Melbourne Cups, the naked eye and even slow motion replays would have left it at a dead-heat but modern technology was less forgiving.

Half a length across the line is around 0.09 seconds, so the margin separating the two Cup horses was more like 1/1000th of that.

Mind-boggling indeed but, with the high-resolution photo magnified four times, the judge was able to find a fresh margin of victory - a pixel. Why would it stop there?

Perhaps if it was any closer, the magnification might have to be 10 times, or more, but eventually, there will be a margin found. After all, a pixel is made of more, smaller, units called bits.

There is probably a commonsense argument somewhere that enough is enough but then joint winners are not the stuff of which Melbourne Cups are made, and that is probably true of any of the real majors.