Problem with Java Swing Timer

[yuzhengwen]

I've been having a weird problem with my swing timer that I use in my game to count my points.
Here's the code:
The problem is that the thread does not run

	public void start() {
		if (!running) {
			t = new Thread(this); // t is the game thread with the game loop
			t.start();
			countPoints.start(); // is the timer, that repeats itself, waits  80miliseconds then add points
			running = true;
		}
	}

NOTE: I found that if I started the timer BEFORE t, it works, why?