Finally, for better or for worse, VAR comes to bike racing

If you're a football fan, or have even half an eye on the sport, you will have heard of VAR. The Video Assistant Referee has proven to be one of the most divisive modern sporting developments, not just in football but in any sport.

It may not please everyone to learn, then, that it has now found its way into cycling for the first time. The Dutch Cycling Union (KNWU) is to introduce VAR in its new NL Beach Cup competition this winter, according to a report by Dutch outlet Wielerflits.

Random riders will be allocated Go-Pro cameras which will work with a livestream and at least one VAR.

“As in other competitive sports, the viewer of the live images sometimes has an advantage over the referee or jury present," said Marcel van Beek, who presides over beach racing at the KNWU. "That is why we are going to phase in a VAR during the beach race competition, in addition to the jury present on location.”

One pilot race with VAR has already taken place, with another – the NK Katwijk – set to take place this weekend on the coast north of the Hague.

The whole system is still very much in the experimental stage, said Van Beek, who called beach race a "living lab" for innovations.

"After the VAR races this winter, an evaluation will take place to assess the quality of the observations by the jury," he said.

Beach racing is a popular winter discipline in the Netherlands, with 13 events on the KNWU calendar this winter, including five in the new NL Beach Cup. It pretty much does what it says on the tin, taking riders up and down the sand for 90min and more.

It does exist in the UK on a smaller scale, with the Battle of the Beach in South Wales one of the most prominent events, although that features significant off-beach riding.

There were no reported incidents in the KNWU's pilot VAR outing. 'Digital judging', as it is also called, may even be better suited to the road racing arena, whose more technical parcours, with team cars in the mix too, seem more likely to throw up rule infringements that could be tackled on the fly. Maybe cameras are even the thing to encourage safer racing.

Whether that will happen – or indeed if anyone would want it to – remains to be seen.