SailGP steers the way for complex tech and growing fleets

On Friday, the Emirates GBR team’s 50ft foiling catamaran was lifted into the water by crane for its first outing in Portsmouth. Looking on from the historic naval dockyards was Admiral Lord Nelson’s famous flagship – the word Victory blazoned on her stern.

Was it a sign? A home win at the Emirates Great Britain Sail Grand Prix would, after all, be a timely one.

Sir Ben Ainslie – possibly the most famous British sailor after Horatio himself – pointed out that there was no such thing as home advantage out on the water. At least, not in the Rolex SailGP Championship. “Any kind of local advantage gets counteracted because the course is so small and everyone learns so quickly,” said the Emirates GBR co-owner and CEO. His team strategist Hannah Mills agreed. “Actually,” said Mills, who won silver on her Olympic debut at London 2012 before adding golds in Rio and Tokyo, “you feel even more pressure.”

And yet, the 20,000 fans gathering on the waterfront in Portsmouth this weekend are a story themselves. It’s a 10-fold increase on the numbers of tickets sold for SailGP’s inaugural event – held in Cowes six years ago – and five times as many as Britain’s last Sail Grand Prix in 2022.

“Ten years ago I wouldn’t have said this was likely, that’s for sure,” said Russell Coutts, the legendary Kiwi skipper who came up with the fast-paced, short-course racing format alongside Oracle founder Larry Ellison – newly the world’s second-richest man. Outside the America’s Cup, held every few years between just two teams, opportunities for elite, professional racing barely existed then.

In SailGP they created a yearly championship of grand prix weekends, in which a fleet of F50 catamarans – whose hulls lift out of the water so that the boats “fly” across the water – compete in a series of 15-minute races. The racing is so close to shore that spectators see it all. In its first season, six teams competed across five rounds: today there are 12 teams and 14 events.

The tournament will expand again, with two new teams next season.

Some of the athletes who steer the boats even warn the field is becoming too crowded and will soon require split-fleet racing. For Mills and Ainslie, who set up their Athena Pathway to identify and develop talent on and off shore (including engineers, boat builders, managers and more) that’s a problem worth having.

“Sailing’s always been labelled an exclusive sport,” said Ainslie, “but young sailors now see this as an actual career.”

The first event of the tournament’s European leg arrives halfway through the 2025 season, with Emirates GBR lying fourth in the table behind the Spanish, Australian and Kiwi teams.

Ainslie no longer races in the six-strong crew – Dylan Fletcher, Olympic champion in Tokyo, now has the wheel. But Great Britain haven’t made the podium since beating the Aussies in Sydney Harbour in February, which Fletcher puts down to “an accumulation of errors”. He said on Friday that despite a good start to the season, “I’m still inexperienced, and there’s still times you’re seeing some cracks.”

Experience is a hard-won commodity in this competition, whose crews have very limited training time in their £5m boats. And because they race identical SailGP-owned craft, this isn’t an arms race – it’s not the tech, but what you do with it, that’s the difference between winning and losing. And operating an F50 is highly complex: their design is more aeroplane than boat, with a single “wing” rather than a sail (at 29m, the largest wing they use compares with that of a Boeing 747).

A “flight controller” keeps the boat on its foils, while a “wing trimmer” controls the speed. Two “grinders” provide the team’s muscle, physically powering the winch handles. With an onboard strategist analysing live data to make split-second decisions around the course, the crew must interact seamlessly – Ainslie has even employed military techniques to improve his team’s communications.

There’s certainly a Top Gun look to the athletes in their cockpits, from mic-ed up helmets to padded impact vests. Safety is paramount, given the danger of high-speed crashes and capsizes, and hydrofoils slicing through water like knives. This year the teams have been given simulators for the first time, to enable them to practise together, and with so many Olympic and world champion athletes across the crews, the field remains thrillingly close, with just 10 points separating the top six teams. “It’s a long game,” as Fletcher points out, “because all that really matters is making the top three by the end of the season.” The final, winner-takes-all event will be staged in Abu Dhabi in November.

You can measure the success of the product by the fact that it has attracted its first celebrity investors – last month Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds bought the Australian team, now branded the Bonds Flying Roos, while Anne Hathaway took a stake in Red Bull Italy in May.

With breezy conditions expected in Portsmouth today, the athletes may be looking for speed records alongside the crowd ones.

Sir Ben Ainslie and Hannah Mills are Rolex testimonees.