SailGP Crosses the halfway point of Season 3
The premiere global sailing series, SailGP, makes the turn for the second half of Season 3, and says goodbye to the European port cities.
The fleet has now completed six of the 11 stops on this season’s calendar. With Dubai looming on the horizon in November, it’s time for the mid-season report card and to look at what’s still to come.
Former US President Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “Smooth seas do not make skilful sailors.” This has been proven true once again. From Bermuda to Spain the prevailing theme this season has been the capricious tendencies of Mother Nature. Conditions have varied from the shifty, puffy winds of Copenhagen to the howling gales of Saint-Tropez, which saw France set a new SailGP racing record of 99.94 km/h, or just over 62mph.
The current standings show; the two-time reigning and defending champions, Australia with a four-point lead over rivals New Zealand. The French currently sit third overall followed by Great Britain, Canada, Denmark, and the United States rounding out the top seven teams. Spain and Switzerland sit at the back of the pack eighth and ninth respectively.
If you are new to the series or competitive sailing, here’s a quick introduction.
The competition was created by American Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, and Sir Russell Coutts, Olympic Gold Medalist, and world champion yachtsmen from New Zealand. Their goal was to establish a commercially viable global race series with a large audience. The SailGP series brings together the planet’s best sailors and crews in a head-to-head national team format. Using state of the art technology and super-fast F50 foiling catamarans, the nine teams vie for points at each event which take place at iconic locations across the globe over two-days.
Seven races over the two days with the last being a podium race where just the top three teams face off. At the end of the season is the Grand Final and will feature a one-off race for $1 million to the winner.
The Australians have been the most consistent team over the first half of season 3. Their driver, Olympic Gold medalist Tom Slingsby takes the “less is more” approach and continually cites a basic yet effective strategy. Keep it simple. The Aussies won the first two events in Bermuda and Chicago and looked unstoppable. Then it was the Kiwi’s turn to make a run, who triumphed in Plymouth and Copenhagen with their driver, two-time Americas Cup Champion Peter Burling. And just when you thought it was going to be a two-team battle to the end.
The Americans showed up in France. Jimmy Spithill, an America’s Cup winner, steered the U.S. squad to the win in Saint-Tropez at the season’s fifth event. The parity theme continued at the most recent event at Cadiz Spain, as the French
squad topped the podium to take us to the halfway point of Season 3. So, six events in and four different winners. At this point in the season the competition is as fierce as it has ever been and still another half to go.
Going forward into SailGP Season 3 there is no reason to believe that Slingsby and the Australians won’t still be in the mix to win the Grand Final in San Francisco. They have too much skill and experience amongst their tight knit crew, plus being two-time champions, they have the experience edge on the rest of the fleet.
New Zealand is also a loaded team, but their issue has always been finding consistency- something they struggled with until Season 3.
If there’s a problem to solve you can expect Peter Burling and company to figure it out. And then it’s wide open.
Questions abound for the rest of the fleet. Can France continue to grow into a topflight team? Can the Americans live up to their pedigree as a great sailing nation? And maybe the biggest question of all comes in the form of Great Britain. A pre-season favourite to possibly unseat the Aussies, Sir Ben Ainslie, the four-time Olympic gold medalist, leads a team with all the credentials. But if there is a team that just seems to find bad luck, it’s the Brits.
Canada is another mystery. Which team will show up in Dubai? The one that made all the right moves in Chicago or the one that just couldn’t cope with the boat and the conditions in France. Switzerland must do better. With former Japan driver, Olympic Gold medalist Nathan Outteridge back at the helm, we can expect the Swiss to make huge strides when the fleet comes back together in November at a first-time venue in Dubai. This will also mark the first time that SailGP has competed in the Middle East.
Following the holiday break, the series resumes in Singapore, Sydney, and Christchurch before the finale in San Francisco in May.
Can the Aussies maintain their hold on the series crown and pull off the three-peat, or will another nation find a favourable breeze to bring the winds of change to the conclusion of SailGP Season 3?
