SailGP: Digging deeper on Portsmouth - did Group racing really work?

by Richard Gladwell/Sail-World NZ 29 Jul 01:36 PDT

SailGP Great Britain appeared to be a rinse-and-repeat of what was a very successful event of the 2025 edition, and it has taken over the now-dropped Auckland as the premier event on the SailGP calendar.

Two beautiful English summer days, a breeze made to order for the foiling wingsailed catamarans, and a large grandstand packed with fans hoping for a home-waters win were a recipe for success.

The obvious change was the implementation of the Group sailing for two days of the Qualification for the four-boat Final. That move followed three major incidents thus far in Season 6, and in the high-octane world of Portsmouth last weekend another incident was always on the cards.

Of the 11 races sailed, ten different teams won races, only the Final winner, Los Gallos (Spain) won two.

Ten winners is a significant PR talking point, and it is very unusual in a fleet of this size and sailor quality, where usually one or two boats have a boat speed edge on which they capitalise.

The deeper analysis shows that the leader around Mark 2 in nine of the ten qualifier races, went on to win the race. Northstar Canada was the exception. They would have proved our point when they were leading towards the end of the penultimate leg, when their starboard main foil "failed to go on the lock". They dropped back into the water in displacement mode, and slipped from first to fifth.

"We had two really solid races, and the middle one [Group A Race 2] was looking equally as solid up until the very last moment on that final downwind, where we slipped back to fifth through missing the board lock on one of our flip-flops," skipper Giles Scott commented after the race.

Up until that point, about halfway down the penultimate leg, the Canadians were leading, and likely would have gone on to win the race.

Several skippers described the racing as processional, with few passing lanes. Followers of F1 will understand the situation completely - where on certain tracks - Monaco being the most notable, where the Qualifying and your pole position is all important and virtually decides the race beyond the first turn.

So it was in SailGP, how teams emerged from the start, and the sprint Leg to Mark 1, and then handled their Leg 2 positioning and rounding strategy, was all important.

Whether this situation is a consequence of sailing in Groups during the qualifying section of the event, and the lead boat around Mark 2 got away in clear air - leaving the peloton to go the right way and cope with the mid-fleet rig turbulence that is a feature of this type of racing.

The shift to Group Racing has been long signalled by the League, and hastened by the three serious collisions so far in Season 6, along with the pending arrival of a 14th team, with Middle Eastern backers. That number of teams contesting the startline, the Sprint Leg, and Mark 1 was a recipe for more serious incidents and injury.

Those of us who were at the Auckland venue for SailGP when the incident between the Black Foils and DS Automobiles will never forget the day. The crash incident began with the F50 fleet charging down the "Sprint Leg". The 10,000-strong crowd of mostly Black Foils fans were on their feet and screaming, as they do at Eden Park when an All Black flies down the sideline to score a match-winning try against the Springboks.

But seconds later, the cheers had dropped to a hush, and all heads turned to the big screen to look to see what was happening up the course, as the rest of the F50s flew past.

Then, for the best part of an hour, we watched as the tangled wreckage of sailing technology drifted down the harbour, pushed by wind and tide.

While the injuries to one sailor were revealed at the time. It was not until much later that it was revealed that one sailor had been in hospital for two weeks for "observation". And later, another had a serious shoulder injury, which was subsequently operated on in Sydney.

Five months later, two of the injured sailors have returned to competitive sailing; in fact, Portsmouth was the first time DS Automobiles were able to race with their full-strength primary crew since a violent crash in Auckland. Manon Audinet, skipper of the French entry in the 2024 Womens America's Cup spent two weeks in Auckland hospital, being "under observation" following the Sprint leg incident in SailGP Auckland, in February. Leigh McMillan had a shoulder reconstruction, and Black Foils Louis Sinclair is still sidelined with a leg fracture - as is wingsail trimmer Glenn Ashby (as a result of a between-tacks slip, and not a collision).

The Auckland incident was preceded by a collision in the previous regatta in Fremantle. It was followed by a three-boat pile-on in New York in May.

Fortunately, no one was injured in Fremantle or New York, but that is more due to good luck rather than good management.

"I would say you shouldn't get any closer to death than that. You're at the mercy of others," was one of Red Bull Italy skipper Phil Robertson's comments following the New York incident. His comments were echoed by others.

Certainly, some very impressive and sophisticated safety procedures swung into action after each incident, but that is the ambulance arriving at the bottom of the cliff.

Staying with F1, the crash barriers that have been erected by SailGP include a requirement to have two sailors clipped onto the aftermost jack-line across the F50.

Three serious incidents across six events should be beyond the acceptable risk level. Four SailGP crew have sustained injuries that have stopped them from competing for more than three months.

SailGP likes to frame itself as "F1 on Water". As most will be well aware, five or six decades ago, F1 motorsport had a high-risk profile. In the 1970s, 16 drivers were killed. It was a fairly gung-ho era, maybe not too different to the current climate.

Back then, the F1 drivers were well aware of what they were getting into. Some even packed up their rooms and baggage before they left for the race track - to spare their next of kin the grief, should they not return. Sir Jackie Stewart calculated that two out of three drivers would be killed participating in the sport they loved.

With the adoption of various safety measures, the number of F1 deaths has dropped markedly, with just one driver killed in the last 25 years.

Hopefully the measures adopted by SailGP will drop the league's collision injury rate down to similar levels, and we can return to a situation where we watch the racing with our hearts in our mouths for all the right reasons.