SailGP: Develop or die - Coutts gives some advice to ageing teams

Germany SailGP TeamHeil ahead of Switzerland SailGP Team and New Zealand SailGP Team on Race Day 1 of the KPMG Australia Sail Grand Prix Sydney, Australia.February 8, 2025 © Jon Buckle/SailGP

SailGP CEO Russell Coutts updates on the wing sail repairs, as new stronger shear webs are fitted to the F50 fleet to alleviate the spate of dismastings. Full reporton wingsail progress click here

He also covers the need for teams to run development programs to bring forward younger talent, rather than keep relying on familiar faces to carry the teams year after year. In particular he notes the performances of the Spanish and French teams during Season 5, and in the back end of Season 4. It also seems that Auckland is the benchmanrk against which other SailGP events are being measured. However it is expected that ticket sales at Event 7 in Portsmouth on July 19-20 will slightly exceed Auckland.

Russell Coutts says that "the audience is growing enormously. And these are certainly the highest audience figures I've seen for a live sailing product in all my years of being involved in both competition and running events."

The fleet is expected to assemble in New York on June 7 & 8 for the Mubadala New York Sail Grand Prix - the sixth event of Season 5.

Speaking with commentator, Stevie Morrison, at the SailGP Technologies facility in Southampton, UK, Coutts sounds a warning to the 12 teams to refresh their talent, upskill younger sailors, and bring them into the SailGP teams.

Wing sails being re-inforced worked at SailGP Technologies in Southampton, UK - May 2025 - photo © SailGP

In Season 4, the Spanish team led by 2024 Olympic Gold medalist Diego Botin won the US$2million Grand Final in San Francisco, leaving the highly fancied Australian and New Zealand teams in their wake. However as Coutts note, the Spanish are not the only ones on the rise.

"The good thing is that you're starting to see teams like the French, coming through. I think clearly the Spanish are now showing they're a quality team. They won the League last year. You expect that. And they're just reinforcing that this year, I think. And to me they look like they're going to get stronger and stronger this year.

"They've got youth on their side. They're still one of the youngest teams, if not maybe the youngest in the league, and stacked full of talent.

"How good are they going to be in two seasons time? That's the challenge that some of the some of the teams with the the older athletes have got.

"Some of those older athletes, I know from personal experience, probably going to be hard for them to see the improvement that the young athletes on the Spanish team are going to see over the next few years.

"So I think that's going to be a challenge for some of these teams. And if I were them, I'd be looking hard to bring on some new talent and start to bring that on stream now, get those new sailors trained so that you're in a position to compete with the Spanish.

"You can easily see them dominating, like the Australians have done for the last seasons. [The risk is] if the other team sit back and just wait for their older sailors to kind of serve out their terms.

"There's plenty of young talent out there now, and a lot of these countries have got their talent in bucket loads, and it's just a matter of now bringing them in and upskilling them on an F50, of course."