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Sailing-Bigger and Faster, SailGP Back where it all Began In Sydney

cleosiede1257 edited this page 2025-02-11 04:22:21 +02:00

By Nick Mulvenney

SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP go back to where it all began in Sydney this weekend and six years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees an intense future for the ingenious global sailing league.

An Olympic champ and skipper of three Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts partnered with Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of the Oracle software business, to launch the series with six teams all owned by the league.

While the inaugural season which kicked off in Sydney in February 2019 included simply five rounds, this weekend's race will be the third round of 13 the now 12-strong fleet will contest on the 2025-26 schedule.

"It's just remarkable, really, the uptake and number of occasions now," SailGP president Coutts told Reuters at the Sydney Opera House on Friday.

"We're certainly sitting at 13, and aiming to increase that over the next seasons to somewhere around 20. If you compare that to Formula One that has 24, that's sort of where we want to get to. So yeah, the future appearances great."

The concept of Formula One on water is implicit in the league's name and the comparison is not far from the mark when the world's finest sailors press the F50 hindering catamarans to their limits at what are awesome speeds for waterborne vessels.

"We didn't set out to just attract the avid sailing fan, we attempt to make this sport easy to understand and explainable for all sports fans," Coutts included.

"Most of our fans are not passionate sailors, and that is among the reasons we've grown so quickly. We are interesting individuals that much like viewing a race, they don't need to comprehend anything about sailboats."

A bumper crowd of 25,000 ticketed fans turned out to enjoy Tom Slingsby's Australia group win the 2nd round of the series in Auckland last month.

"I think you'll see numerous of our occasions this year now like that, perhaps even topping that," said Coutts, scientific-programs.science a 62-year-old New Zealander.

"The most essential thing is the fans watching on broadcast ... however the fan experience on site is likewise critically important. We desire fans to come and have an excellent time and see some terrific racing."

Technological innovation is integral to SailGP and numerous countless data points are passed on from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for valetinowiki.racing using race organisers, wiki.whenparked.com groups and to assist broadcasters enhance the audience experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is excited about some more developments coming online as Artificial Intelligence is progressively employed to work through the mountain of data.

"The huge advancement for us going forward is the 360 degree view from on board the boat, with listening to the group comms," he said.

"The audience will be taken on board and ride together with the Australian team in a race, and have the ability to look around any place they desire. That's the future."

There have, of course, opensourcebridge.science been difficulties over the six years with the second season interrupted by the COVID pandemic and race days still sometimes at the grace of wind conditions.

A lack of F50s suggested the French team was not able to contend at this race in Dubai and damage to the boat once they got it ruled them out of the Auckland leg.

The complete fleet of 12 boats will therefore race for the very first time this weekend and one of the most pleasing elements for Coutts is that all however one of the teams are, or asteroidsathome.net soon will be, independently owned or engel-und-waisen.de run.

"These groups are now offering for $50 million, I would never ever have predicted that this early on," said Coutts, valetinowiki.racing who plans to bring another couple of teams on board next year.

"We knew that that was the entire method the model was set up, that group owners would be able to trade their groups and hopefully generate income out of it, but I didn't think we 'd attain it this early. That's been a great surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, modifying by Michael Perry)