Latest news with #SailGrandPrix
Reuters
01-05-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Apres-ski to hits the high seas: La Folie Douce heads to Portsmouth
Summary Companies La Folie Douce brings apres-ski vibe to Portsmouth's Sail Grand Prix SailGP partners with La Folie Douce and chef Ollie Dabbous 20,000 spectators expected for high-speed F50 catamaran races PORTSMOUTH, England, May 1 (Reuters) - - Champagne sprays and DJ decks will trade mountain peaks for ocean spray this summer as apres-ski pioneers La Folie Douce bring their high-altitude hedonism to Britain's premier sailing spectacle. SailGP, taking place in Portsmouth on July 19–20, will mark its return to British shores with a new waterfront lounge where the party atmosphere of the French Alps meets high-octane sailing just metres from shore, organisers said on Thursday. 'SailGP is thrilled to team up with world-class hospitality brands such as La Folie Douce and celebrated chef Ollie Dabbous,' said SailGP Chief Marketing Officer Leah Davis. 'It promises to be an unforgettable apres-sail experience that fans will not want to miss.' Founded in Val d'Isere in 1974 by Luc Reversade, La Folie Douce has expanded to eight locations across prestigious French ski resorts including Courchevel, Meribel and Val Thorens, becoming the definitive high-altitude party destination combining gourmet dining with theatrical performances and DJ sets. Some 20,000 spectators are expected at SailGP's first appearance on British shores in three years, where they will witness 12 national teams racing F50 catamarans at speeds exceeding 100 km/h.
Perth Now
23-04-2025
- Sport
- Perth Now
Popular Perth beach to host Sail Grand Prix for first time
Luring the Sail Grand Prix championship west for the first time will give West Australians a once in 40-year chance to rekindle a nostalgic love affair with sailing off Fremantle, according to Americas Cup legend John Longley. The annual championship takes place in major cities across the world including New York and Saint-Tropez and for the next three years, Fremantle as well. 'We are absolutely delighted, I honestly don't think Perth and Fremantle will realise how huge this event is until they see it next year,' Mr Longley told PerthNow. Your local paper, whenever you want it. 'This is a major event and a huge number of eyeballs watch these events, it is going to be fantastic for Fremantle and for Perth. 'It is easily comparable with the Formula One, it will be like the America's Cup revisited.' Called the PerthSail Grand Prix, the new Australian leg will take place over two days with a minimum of three 15-minute races per day and a showdown between the three highest-scoring teams. It is expected SailGP will attract thousands of overseas tourists to WA next January. Spectators will be able to watch the event from a purpose-built grandstand. Australia II crew members John Longley and Skip Lissiman in Fremantle. Credit: Jackson Flindell / The West Australian The event will also return to WA in 2027 and 2028 as part of a three-year deal. SailGP is one of the world's most fast-paced and prestigious sailing events, featuring 50-foot catamarans raced by teams from 12 nations close to the shoreline and at speeds of more than 100km/h. Fremantle mayor Hannah Fitzhardinge heaped praise on Mr Longley, a veteran of five campaigns for the America's Cup including Australia II's breakthrough victory in 1983, and another local legend from the victorious 1983 crew Skip Lissiman, who through the Warren Jones Foundation had lobbied hard for Fremantle's inclusion. 'Fremantle is known around the world as a brilliant sailing destination and sailing is a sport that's close to our hearts,' she said. 'This is an exciting opportunity for the people of Perth to experience world-class, adrenalin-fuelled racing on water. The speeds at which these boats go is mind-blowing. 'We saw the huge crowds that flocked to Sydney Harbour for the SailGP race there earlier this year. If that's anything to go by, the atmosphere at Bathers Beach/Manjaree will be electric.' Mr Longley said the Warren Jones Foundation had always wanted to bring another prestigious event to Fremantle and carry on the port city's sailing legacy. 'SailGP has always been interested in Fremantle but Sydney has had an exclusive deal with them which ended in 2025,' he said. 'To bring a top event to Fremantle has always been our priority, the great advantage of this event is the boats sail right in close, people will almost feel like they can touch them.' Australian Sailing chief executive Ben Houston said WA deserved a chance to watch the Australian SailGP team — which he called the most successful team in the history of the competition — up close. 'It is a fitting reward for Perth. Western Australia has long been a hotbed of Australian sailing talent, with some of our greatest Australian sailors learning their craft on the Swan River and out in the Indian Ocean,' he said. 'We know that the Sydney SailGP event brings in approximately $20 million in economic impact per event, with thousands of visitors attending the two-day race weekend. 'The event broadcast will also see Fremantle beamed into households around the world, as happened with the Sydney event which attracted a dedicated global TV audience of 21.1 million.' Fremantle Sailing Club executive officer Craig Evans said the local sailing community was pumped. 'It's such exciting news. With a very active local sailing community everyone will be thrilled with the announcement,' Mr Evans said. 'SailGP will provide a great opportunity to showcase Fremantle and our pristine coastal waters to the world.'
Yahoo
23-03-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
SFFD: Don't fly drones at Sail Grand Prix races
SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — The San Francisco Fire Department (SFFD) is warning sailing fans to not operate drones during this weekend's Sail Grand Prix (SailGP) races. Get your latest weather report The Rolex SailGP Championship, which brings teams competing from all over the globe, and the Oracle San Francisco Sail Grand Prix occur back-to-back respectively on Saturday, March 22 and Sunday, March 23 along the Marina Green. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, SFFD wrote, 'Are you going to see the sailboat races at Marina Green on Sunday 03/23/2025? Drones are prohibited.' Officials confirmed that the event area is an Air Exclusion Zone, meaning unauthorized drones are banned 'in the vicinity of the event site and near the water race course.' The major concern is drones are potentially dangerous for helicopters that are operating in the area. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
New York Times
13-03-2025
- Climate
- New York Times
New SailGP Teams Must Learn to ‘Fly.' And Quickly.
It's not easy learning to fly. But for new or recently reorganized teams that are competing in SailGP, it's a crucial step to winning races and competing for the season's championship title. SailGP's fifth season features more teams and events than ever, but its fleet of identical F50 catamarans, which can fly above the water on hydrofoils at highway speeds, have a steep learning curve. Sailors say these boats reward experience, especially in high- or low-wind conditions. This creates challenges for newer or less experienced teams, because SailGP closely controls the amount of practice time that teams log on their 50-foot-long F50s. Season 5's first three events had a challenging mix of light air (Dubai, United Arab Emirates) and then stronger winds (Auckland, New Zealand, and Sydney, Australia), but the Los Angeles Sail Grand Prix, which will take place on Saturday and Sunday, could deliver friendlier conditions. According to Chris Bedford, SailGP's official meteorologist, Los Angeles has historically experienced mid-March winds ranging from 9 to 16 knots. Contrast this with Dubai, which delivered winds of about 6 to 11 knots, Auckland (about 12 to 22 knots) and Sydney (about 11 to 19 knots). 'The F50 is in its sweet spot in about 14 to 15 knots and flat water,' said Giles Scott, an Olympic double gold medalist and the new driver of the Canadian-flagged NorthStar SailGP Team. 'If it is in that sweet spot, it's going to be full-on,' he said of the Los Angeles event. 'It's going to be competitive.' If this happens, it could help less experienced teams by delivering a playing field that's less reliant on teams' depth of F50 experience. 'I think it makes the boat a lot easier to sail and to race,' said Russell Coutts, SailGP's chief executive and a five-time America's Cup winner. He explained that sailors did not have to make as many adjustments to the settings of their boats in steady winds. 'Maybe they might get one event where it's moderate winds and smooth water.' But even in moderate conditions, racing F50s is challenging. 'They're one of the fastest boats out there,' said Martine Grael, a double Olympic gold medalist and the driver of the Mubadala Brazil SailGP Team, which joined the league for Season 5. 'Things happen really fast.' Grael, who is SailGP's first and only female driver, described F50s as technical boats. 'We intentionally make the boats hard to sail, complex to sail, because they're meant to be a test for the best [sailing] athletes in the world,' Coutts said. 'If you're any top sports person, you want to test yourself against the best in the world and in equal equipment.' Ruggero Tita, a double Olympic gold medalist and the driver of the Red Bull Italy SailGP Team, which also joined the league for Season 5, agreed that F50s could be challenging to race. 'Every role on the boat is extremely important for the full performance,' Tita said. He likened the experience to assembling a puzzle, where the sailors are the pieces. All roles, he said, must be perfectly aligned and coordinated. This is where experience pays dividends. Erik Heil, a double Olympic bronze medalist and the driver of the Germany SailGP Team presented by Deutsche Bank, which joined the league in Season 4, said that some sailors had years more experience than others on the boats. 'We have quite limited time in these boats to catch up,' Heil said. This presents leadership and team-building challenges. 'We're very much on a bit of a building program with the team,' Scott said of his new squad. 'The biggest challenge has been just a new group of people working together,' he said. While Coutts and Scott said that it was possible for less experienced teams to win races and compete for — or win — the season championship, Scott said his team had a shaky start to its season. At the windy Auckland event, for example, Billy Gooderham, the team's flight controller, who adjusts the boat's hydrofoils, was injured. As a result, the team didn't compete in three of the event's seven fleet races. While Coutts said the Canadian team was working to add depth to their backup sailors, other teams were still working on advancing the skills of their primary crew members. This is where big data can ease the learning curve. F50s are fitted with 125 sensors that capture about 53 billion data points, across all 12 boats, per race day. This data is transmitted to an Oracle-run cloud, where it's available to the teams. 'All the data is centralized,' Coutts said. Teams can interrogate the data using Oracle's artificial intelligence to produce data-driven insights on what their competitors are doing. 'It is incredibly powerful,' Coutts said, adding that SailGP uses this data and Oracle's A.I. to detect any anomalies in the boats' electronics and hydraulics to ensure equality among the fleet. In addition to shared data, SailGP has two full-scale simulators. 'Simulators helped a lot with getting the mechanical process for maneuvers,' Grael said. But Grael and others said there were limitations on how the computer replicates the wind. 'It reaches a limit quite early,' Heil said, noting that while the simulators are great, they're far removed from sailing an F50. Because of this, Heil said that his team instead trained aboard 32-foot catamarans and small, one-person foiling boats, which aren't governed by SailGP training rules, which prohibit teams from training on the F50s outside of officially sanctioned practice days. Transfers are another new way that teams can buy experience. Since last fall, 10 athletes have been transferred between six teams. 'You learn more, and you learn faster, when you've got some key experience around you,' Coutts said. Take the Italian team's acquisition of Kyle Langford, a wing trimmer who helped the Australia SailGP Team win SailGP's first three championship titles. 'He is the only one that is experienced in the boat,' Tita said of Langford. 'He's super important, and he's trying hard to teach us' to quickly become a 'better version of ourselves.' Case in point: The Italian team finished in sixth place at the Auckland event. This was the best result there by any of the new or recently reorganized teams. To address the wide range of conditions that the league races in, SailGP created two sets of hydrofoils and three different wing sails — big ones for light winds, medium-size wings for average conditions and small ones for heavy winds — to best match conditions. Sailors say that while both ends of the wind spectrum are challenging, lighter winds can be more demanding, especially for newer teams. 'One of the biggest things in our sport is like how you can time the takeoffs when you go from displacement sailing into foiling,' Grael said, referring to sailing with one or both of the hulls in the water. This transition requires speed. F50s need to be moving through the water at around 16 to 18 knots — or about 18 to 20 miles per hour — for their hydrofoils to lift the boat out of the water (imagine a plane taking off). Drop below this threshold and boats crash back into the water. This matters greatly because F50s are much faster when they fly above the water on their hydrofoils than when they drag their hulls through it. 'Marginal foiling is what we struggle with,' Heil said, describing conditions between displacement sailing and foiling, and noting that windier conditions are way more natural. Grael might be new to SailGP, but she said she also preferred racing in heavier winds than lighter breezes. 'Very difficult sailing conditions are difficult for everyone,' she said of windy days, adding that experience was more pronounced in light winds. Even if conditions in Los Angeles are ideal, it could be a short-lived reprieve: SailGP's next stop, one week later, is San Francisco. 'That's going to be a windy event, top of the top of the range, probably more than likely,' Coutts said. 'That's not going to be easy.'
