Pollard's persistence pays off with SB20 Worlds victory in Singapore
by Andy Rice 25 Jan 2025 23:07 PST
18-25 January 2025
After competing in 14 previous editions of the SB20 World Championship going back as far as 2009, British sailor John Pollard has finally fulfilled his ambition of winning the big prize in Singapore...
John Pollard and his team on Xcellent have won the SB20 World Championship after a week of predominantly light airs in Singapore. For the British skipper, the victory is vindication of a long-held ambition to make it all the way to the top of this challenging international sportsboat fleet.
Pollard has come close in the past, climbing on to the podium on two previous occasions without quite managing the final step. The British sailor, from Torbay in the south-west of England, has tended to rely on strong breeze for good results, but his dominant victory in the light airs of Singapore along with crew members Henry Wetherell and David Chapman shows that Pollard has now become an all-round master of the SB20.
Light Airs Maestros
"We've been working on light-wind setups, rig set-up, mast characteristics and looking for differences in the sails, especially the jib," he explained. "We've generated good light airs speed even though we're one of the heavier teams. We were around 264kg all-up, 6 kilos off the maximum 270kg class limit, and probably about 9kg over what I think is the ideal SB20 crew weight of 255kg. But our light-airs setups with our rig tensions and control of the sail shapes gave us a speed edge, for sure."
Even though most of the racing took place in shifty, tactical conditions, Pollard said raw speed was always critical: "You've got to be able to launch from the line and hold your lane, always, whatever the conditions. From then on, it's about getting the first shift, which is what we managed to do. It was an oscillating breeze predominantly. There were a few odd ones in between, but mostly the breeze was going through a 3-to-8 minute cycle of oscillation. So the first thing is get the good start, and then look for that vital first cross."
Pollard paid tribute to his crew: "Henry I've sailed with for many years and we'll continue to do so. David Chapman, well I've known him since the Cowes Worlds (2017) and we spoke at the Worlds last year in Dubai about sailing together. I just felt he knows the boat so well and he knows what he can do on a tactician's course, and David did an outstanding job this week."
Mccartney Stoked to Get Second
Whereas Pollard has been helming the SB20 for more than 15 years, runner-up skipper Paul McCartney has only been steering the boat for two. Sailing with two members of the 2023 Worlds winning team - Will Sargent and Ed Reid - the Australian briefly took up the leader's yellow jersey earlier in the regatta before Pollard's speed and experience started to make the difference in the latter stages.
Sargent was running the middle of McCartney's brand new Devoti boat, Porco Rosso. "As we were working the boat up to speed in the Asian Championships it was clear that John [Pollard] had a very obvious speed advantage on us," said Sargent, who was the winning skipper from the 2023 Worlds in The Hague. "Eddie and I had done about 20 to 30 days of sailing with Paul in the build-up to the Worlds, so it was mostly getting Paul comfortable with how me and Eddie sail the boat together, because we sail together so much. By the end of the regatta we were as fast as anybody."
Unfortunately Porco Rosso put themselves on the back foot by picking up a UFD disqualification when they crossed the start line too soon in race two. "In a one-drop event with 13 races, it's a pretty brutal thing to get your drop so early on," said Sargent. "I think the the most impressive part of our performance was actually having the resilience to put that aside and put together a really consistent series, even though we were being attacked by Pollard and Co. from about race six onwards. It felt quite early for us to be getting so much attention at the halfway stage, but it obviously showed they thought we were the biggest threat by a long way.
"But Paul has only been steering the boat for two years. Before that he was doing the bow with other guys steering his boat, so he was stoked to get such a big result, especially on such a hard race track, the hardest I've ever experienced in a championship."
Up-and-Coming Talent
Finishing behind Porco Rosso in third place overall was Youth Team FFV, a young French crew skippered by Paul Loiseau. They won the Youth and Corinthian category and finished ahead of some big names, so this young French team are surely ones to watch for the future.
Different members of the Borghesi family were at the helm of three separate boats. Father of the family, Paolo Borghesi, won two races towards the end of the regatta, yet he was bettered in the overall scores by his 10-year-old son William Borghesi and a young team on Wind Warriors, who also managed to win two races during the regatta.
However it was mum, Charlotte Borghesi, who came out ahead in the family battle, her all-female crew on Kidzink finishing in sixth overall. Crewing for Charlotte were three outstanding Olympic talents - 2008 Olympic Champion Pippa Kenton-Page from Great Britain, along with two Swedish Olympic medallists from Paris 2024, Rebecca Netzler and Lovisa Karlsson. Charlotte Borghesi was last year's World Champion and will no doubt be fighting hard to regain the overall title in the coming years.
Boats on Order for Ostend
With Devoti Boats having become the official class builder in recent months, there's a real buzz in the class. According to Will Sargent, his skipper Paul McCartney was made an offer that he couldn't refuse to sell Porco Rosso, a brand new Devoti delivered for the event in Singapore. McCartney will be commissioning a new boat to be delivered for the SB20 European Championship in Belgium. It is one of 15 new boats that have been placed on order for the Europeans which take place in Ostend this August.
Hyères in the south of France hosts the next SB20 World Championship in 2026, followed by Torbay, UK, in 2027. Having enjoyed a taste of victory in Singapore, the new World Champion from Torbay will surely want to repeat that feeling on home waters in two years' time.
Full results available here.
For more information visit Worlds2025.sb20class.org.