VAR on water as SailGP's remote umpires make calls from afar

LONDON: With US$2 million on the line at this month's SailGP Grand Final, every points penalty imposed by Craig Mitchell and his team of umpires during the season has had a potentially big impact.

But Mitchell, a professional umpire who will also be working as "rules adviser" for Germany's sailing team at the Olympic Games, appeared unfazed by any pressure as he oversaw the practice races for the New York Sail Grand Prix last month.

What is unique about SailGP's umpiring is that as the crews "fly" their foiling 50-foot catamarans thousands of miles away, every split-second call is made remotely from west London, taking the video assistant referee (VAR) concept to an extreme.

The software which allows the umpires to make rulings within seconds about incidents on the water is called "UmpApp". Based on technology first developed for the America's Cup, it gives the GPS position of each boat to within 2.5cm.

"It's the kind of GPS that you put in a bomb .. They are proper military grade units we are using," Mitchell told Reuters in the control room of SailGP, the league set up by Oracle founder Larry Ellison.

Resembling air traffic controllers, the umpires track the race on screens showing colour-coded blobs and lines representing the 10 catamarans, which can also be seen whizzing past New York's Manhattan skyline and the Statue of Liberty at speeds nearing 100 kmh through live video.

The league, approaching its season finale in San Francisco on Jul 13-14, has decided to get tougher on penalising collisions on the water because of the cost and time involved for its technicians in repairing the one-design craft.

"We brought in some penalty points for contact and still people were hitting each other, so we doubled the points. So people