How military-grade GPS systems help put SailGP at the forefront of sports officiating

New York Times

3 days ago

Within 110 seconds of the start of the race, the umpire has already ruined two teams' races.
One boat (Brazil) jumped the start and another (Australia) were deemed to be the cause of a near-miss collision, forcing Canada to take evasive action.
'Ohhhh! Craig Mitchell dealing out a tough card for the Brazilians!' commentator Todd Harris exclaimed, while Canadian team member Giles Scott says during the race: 'Craig, that was a black flag incident. We almost cut a boat in half there.'
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'I am still baffled by the decision — that cost us the final,' Australia's Tom Slingsby will say afterwards.
Pretty straightforward, then.
Mitchell is the leader of SailGP's version of soccer's VAR, the sport's chief umpire, and in many ways, it's a thankless task; he'll never please everybody.
In another way, he and his team of officials could probably teach other sports a thing or two about how to utilize technology and transparency.
The Athletic was given behind-the-scenes access at SailGP broadcast headquarters in London to find out how military-grade GPS systems help keep this high-speed water sport flowing.
The use of technology to officiate sports remains a turbulent process. Soccer is very much still in the infancy phase (we hope) of using video replays to improve the sport and make it fairer. Give it a few more years, eh?
The electronic line calling (ELC) system revolutionized the accuracy of line calls in tennis, but it's not a completely flawless system just yet. Over the years, cricket has certainly had its issues with the Decision Review System (DRS), which allows players to challenge on-field decisions.
Sailing, or specifically SailGP, the big money, big stakes, 12-team championship which launched in 2019 and can count Real Madrid's Kylian Mbappe and Hollywood's Ryan Reynolds among its investors, has been using technology since its inception — SailGP's founders, the American billionaire Larry Ellison and sailing great Russell Coutts, wanted to transform a sport widely perceived, in the UK at least, as being elitist.
Generally in sailing, umpires attempt to follow the action on the water, positioned in a powerboat behind the race, hanging on for dear life at 80-odd kilometres an hour (50 mph) and holding up little flags to indicate penalties.
But Mitchell is based in the altogether more serene surroundings of Ealing, west London, in the same studio that brings SailGP to our TV screens.
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It's his and his team's job to spot infringements during races and dish out penalties. The chief umpire's role is a prominent one that involves communicating decisions live on TV and often fronting up afterwards to explain them. For soccer fans of a certain age, he's SailGP's Pierluigi Collina or, given Mitchell is more of a rugby union fan, Nigel Owens.
'I'm the face of the organization,' he says. 'Or the dart board.'
Search Mitchell's name online and you'll see entire YouTube videos dedicated to analyzing his decisions.
'I see some of it, but I don't chase it,' Mitchell says. 'If we've made errors, we confess. We talk to teams and explain why we got it wrong. We want feedback on how the guys see it; are we missing something? Are we on the same page as them?'
The technology Mitchell and his team predominantly lean on is called UmpApp, which in layman's terms shows the boats or, to be more precise, the F50 carbon-fiber catamarans, racing on their screens via what can only be described as 1980s video game-style graphics; simple, 2D figures zooming around a plain blue background.
The GPS positions of the F50s are accurate to within 2.5 centimeters and have the same trackers that are used in missiles.
By stripping everything back bar the tiny little boat figures, the umpires can concentrate fully on the direction of travel and how far the F50s are from their competitors.
All 12 teams race head-to-head during a Grand Prix weekend, of which there are 12 this season, in identical F50s, helping keep costs down and races close. When the F50s are foiling above the water, they are capable of speeds over 60mph (100 km/h) — so for safety reasons, the sailors (or athletes as SailGP likes to call them) are permanently tethered to a retaining line on the F50s to prevent them from falling overboard.
Many penalties are handed out for not giving way to another boat or not giving enough room for them to manoeuvre.
Unlike in soccer, cricket, tennis, etc, SailGP doesn't stop to allow for an informed refereeing judgement. Decisions must be made in real time.
'We can't stop the race,' Mitchell says. 'I like to make a decision within seven to 10 seconds of an incident, which is a self-imposed deadline. That means you've got to be on the front foot when it comes to both making decisions and anticipating incidents. The biggest part of umpiring is anticipation and the positioning.
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'Being here (in Ealing) helps give us consistency; we know the setup, we're not shipping things around the world. You miss being in the same conditions as them and experiencing how windy and wavy it is, and how nervous they're getting.
'In terms of making decisions, we're better here because you've got all the data at your fingertips. The hardest part on the water is being in the right place to make that decision. Here, we're everywhere all at once.'
Mitchell, in a notion many soccer players will find alien, is a referee/umpire who has a sense of humour and doesn't take himself too seriously. It feels like a pretty important characteristic for someone who, as he says, is the dartboard of SailGP.
'We had a big call recently with the British team. We felt they hadn't kept clear. I think Ben's (Sir Ben Ainslie, Britain's most successful Olympic sailor and the owner of the British team) response was 'lock him in the tower'.
'We need to be transparent. If we don't explain the thinking — and then get feedback — we don't improve.
'If someone disagrees fundamentally with a call but we stand by it, we just say, 'We'd do the same again', so then that team knows how to respond the next time.'
Mitchell is fully aware of VAR and its controversies. He believes the lack of communication in stadiums, with 60,000 people not having a clue what is going on while a decision is deliberated over for several minutes, isn't ideal.
'I think baseball has started doing announcements in the stadium, cricket and rugby do, you can get the earpiece at the rugby game to listen to referee comms.
'I'll press a button to let the broadcasters know I'm about to speak, although not all the decisions will be broadcast, depending on how important they are to the race, but the teams will all be told.
'We also have contact with the teams before a race with a pre-race briefing, then an online debrief at the start of the next event.'
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During a two-day Grand Prix — the SailGP season runs from November to November — there are seven fleet races (heats), with the three highest-scoring teams progressing to a winner-takes-all final.
Incidents are clipped up and posted online, while Mitchell also gives regular interviews, sometimes detailing the nuances of every decision made.
There's no hiding place. If competitors are heard over the race audio criticizing Mitchell, even swearing, it could be clipped up and posted on social media.
'I'd love to go and see the VAR setup,' he adds. 'It would be interesting to see the processes, the training you do, and how you practice.
'Once a month, we get the (UmpApp) tools, which is absolutely the key to getting the best from it. We simulate by running old races. It's not quite the same, as you don't have the adrenaline or pressure, but it gets the communication in sync. If we do drop the ball, it's been a communication error, so you need to be regimented in knowing what you're concentrating on.'
That refers to Mitchell's six-strong team each being allocated a certain portion of the race. For example, of the 12 F50s, one referee will zoom in on two or three catamarans competing with each other on the water, while someone else will look at another couple of boats, etc.
Another difference with soccer is that sailors and racers become officials. In fact, Mitchell thinks it's a vital pre-requisite.
'It's my view that if you've done high-level sailing, you'll make a good official,' he adds.
'You don't need to be Lionel Messi, of that caliber, but you need people who know how to kick a ball, take a penalty, elude the offside trap and know how the game works, because that gives you anticipation of what's going to happen… and knowledge of why things are happening.'
Watching Mitchell and his team officiate during Sunday's races in Portsmouth — the Grand Prix was won by New Zealand — shows how calm communication is central to making the whole thing work, informing each other who is looking at what part of the race, and also using live television coverage and the best replay angles to help inform decisions. For example, the windier and more dangerous the water is, the more allowance may be given for certain actions.
'One of the coaches suggested we get a leaf blower in here to show the conditions out on the water,' Mitchell jokes.
The two biggest calls both come in race six, firstly with Brazil sent to the back after fractionally jumping the start. Launching out of the timed start and reaching Mark 1 first is a huge advantage before teams head downwind for two laps of the course.
'It's a really big penalty,' Mitchell admits. 'Some guys were late starters, so we had to push them behind everyone, which is really harsh.'
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Then a four-boat incident involving Australia, Great Britain, Denmark and Canada sees Australia heavily punished.
'It was a tricky situation, four boats all converging; you work out who's got to give room to who,' Mitchell later says.
'We went to the end of the line, which was Australia. My quick review now, after the race, is it was between Australia and Great Britain.'
Mitchell will spend the next couple of hours going over those decisions and assessing where he and his team could have done better. Still, he judges their accuracy to be at around 98 percent for a recent race at Plymouth.
'We got two wrong out of 85 decisions made over that weekend,' he says. 'The accuracy is pretty good, but we should be that high. There's nothing we don't have at our disposal.
'Back in the day when we were on the water, there were some decisions we just wouldn't have been able to make because we didn't see them properly. Now we can see everything, so there aren't many excuses for not getting it right.'