SailGP matures with new tech, stiff rivalry

NEW YORK - As SailGP approaches its fifth season of racing, this professional sailing league is finally flying on its own two foils.

- NYTIMES

For the first three seasons of the racing series - Singapore was the first Southeast Asian leg in 2023 - one team dominated the championship contest and the seven-figure prize. However, a surprise win in the fourth season's championship demonstrated that SailGP's talent pool is increasing and that other teams now have the skills to compete for the title.

Moreover, with the fifth season starting in November, almost all of the 11 teams are financially independent from the league, team valuations have surged, and the league is welcoming its first woman driver, new technologies, more teams and events - all signs that indicate that SailGP is achieving a new level of maturity in professional sailing.

During the first three seasons, the Australia SailGP Team and its driver, Tom Slingsby, an Olympic gold medalist, won the title each time. They looked unstoppable. This changed last season when driver Diego Botin, also an Olympic gold medalist, and the Spain SailGP Team won the winner-takes-all Grand Final race in San Francisco in July.

"We had a really good season, but the nature of this game is only one person can win, and it comes down to a very short final," Slingsby said. Spain's win was impressive given that it finished last in the third season.

"I was surprised they won; I wasn't surprised they were vying for victory. It was a matter of when, not if," said Russell Coutts, SailGP's CEO and a five-time America's Cup winner.

Botin attributed some of his team's win to the shared data. Each F50 catamaran used in the series is identical and carries 125 sensors that process 1.15 billion data requests per hour by SailGP's Oracle-based cloud. All teams can access this data.