Commissioners use video replay for the first time – Quartz

The World Cup is not the only major sporting event to introduce video-badisted officiating, better known as VAR, this year. The Tour de France, currently in its third and final week, is officiating with the help of replay technology for the first time in its 105-year history.

In addition to television camera images, race officials The commissaires use another lens to judge the race: social media. Commissioners have access to an aggregator of several Twitter accounts that helps them identify and review incidents on the road.

"The Twitter package includes all relevant accounts, including organizers, broadcasters and online outlets" of the governing body of cycling, the UCI, said in a statement. "It complements the TV monitors displaying the race."

Unlike most sports that use VAR, such as football or basketball, the action on a bike race extends over a large area, making it more difficult to arbitrate. A typical stage of the Tour involves somewhere in the region of 150 runners scattered miles away from the road at dizzying speeds. Commissary cars and motorcycles get as close as possible to key battles to detect infractions, such as driving dangerously or enjoying the wake of a car, but it's impossible for them to identify all potential infractions with these resources alone. That's why they enjoy social gossip around a race to help keep riders honest.

"It's like when you drive and you know that a policeman is watching you-it makes you more cautious," says Guillaume Neveux of the broadcast technology company EVS, who developed the system. Xeebra used in the video van of the UCI. "Having this technology reduces bad behavior and increases the fairness of the sport."

Bad behavior has already been shown in this year's Tour, with Team Sky pilot Gianni Moscon ejected Monday after footage of the previous day's scene.

The introduction of VAR technology this year came about after Peter Sagan's controversial disqualification of the Tour last year for causing an accident in a mbadive sprint. Sagan, the current world champion cyclist, was cleared by helicopter images showing the accident from another angle, but the decision was not overturned. With more tips from sources looking at a race, the governing body of the sport hopes to avoid this kind of mistakes in the future.