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Dylan Larkin’s All-Star Fastest Skater run was legit

You saw it last night or you’ve seen it since then. It’s the talk of the hockey world right now. Dylan Larkin broke the record for fastest skater at the All-Star game. Mike Gartner previously held the record, which he set in 1996, months before Dylan Larkin was even born.

Gartner’s time was 13.386 seconds. Larkin’s new time was 13.172. That’s not exactly beating it by a nose.

However, some people don’t think Larkin’s record counts because he was given a running start from the blue line to the center red line before going the full circle. I think those people are whining, but hey, it’s not a terrible point. If only we had a way to go from standing start to full stop one lap later…

Oh wait, we do!

That’s the cut from Larkin starting at the blue line and ending at the same blue line. You can time it with a stopwatch it you want, otherwise, you can just look at this.

This is the very first frame of that gif. Larkin is just now starting his push to begin this lap. You’ll notice it says “frame 0” at the top and that the delay is set for 0.1. That’s ten frames per second.

Now look at this:

There’s Larkin almost entirely across that same blue line in frame 128 (in 127 he’s entirely short of it…. dude’s flying)

Frame 128 here is really 129 since the counter starts at 0. At ten frames per second, you do the math. Is that run from standing still to a full lap more than 13.3 seconds? Do you think I cut out four vital frames?

Listen, you can believe what you want to believe. This thing counts Larkin as being faster than the official timer credited him for. I’m not trying to say he was two frames faster. I’m just saying the argument about Larkin winning by the “running start’ argument doesn’t hold up. Even if you take him standing-to-standing, he was faster on the same lap.

All hail the new king of speed Dylan Larkin.

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