Saint-Tropez, France — Tempers have erupted on the Gulf of St Tropez between Australia and New Zealand after a “ridiculous” finish to the opening race saw “unnecessary damage” and almost caused “serious injuries”.
On a windy day in the south of France, Tom Slingsby’s Team Australia F50 catamaran looked like they would edge Peter Burling’s New Zealand crew as the trans-Tasman neighbours raced towards the finish line.
But with metres left in the first of three races, Burling’s New Zealand F50 seized on an opening and luffed on Australia.
With every nation pushing the limits in the dangerous conditions that hadn’t been seen before in SailGP, with France registering the fastest ever speed on water by a sailing boat of 99.94km/h (53.9 knots), Slingsby’s Australia catamaran nosedived into the water and crawled over the finish line.
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It saw Australia drop from a certain top two finish to fifth place, as the chasing pack flew past Slingsby’s crew.
Slingsby was fuming, describing the incident as “stupid” on broadcast moments after the opening race as Australia’s crew attempted to repair their broken F50 catamaran.
“You can see here all this damage for something so stupid,” Slingsby said.
“I don’t really understand what was going on there. We were just trying to get across the line safely. It’s race one of the series.
“We would have happily given them the position, we were just trying to cross the line.
“(Now) we’ve got all this damage because Pete Burling wanted one extra point. It’s ridiculous.”
Despite scrambling to temporarily fix “six or seven things” with “holes everywhere”, Slingsby’s Australian crew managed to extraordinary win the second race as they capitalised on the mistakes from their rivals.
An early mistake in the third race saw Australia chasing their tails early before finishing seventh.
It meant Australia finished the opening day in third spot on 20 points, seven behind leaders New Zealand (27) and Jimmy Spithill’s USA (25) ahead of day two’s three fleet races. The top three in the overall standings qualify for the winner takes all final.
Despite Australia’s rallying effort, Slingsby was still fuming after the aggressive move by the America’s Cup winning skipper put their rivals in a precarious position.
“Him coming up at us, that’s just unsafe,” Slingsby said.
“We’re just trying to finish the race.
“In that scenario, it’s 50-50 whether people get seriously injured and I don’t think it’s worth it for one point.
“I’m sure he’s got a different view. He always seems to have a pretty warped view.”
Burling hit back at Slingsby, saying the Australian was “out of line”.
“Our boat, we felt that we were fully within the rules,” he said.
“From our point of view, we were always going to avoid the collision.
“If he wanted to even just take a penalty, we were more than happy with that.
“They obviously had a pretty big nosedive and (are) trying to blame it on us, which I think is out of line.”
Slingsby refused to stand down, saying his counterparts went against the spirit of the race by putting Australia at risk.
“We would we’re just trying to get through the finish line and I was just trying to hold the wheel straight, there was so much load in the wheel,” he said.
“I think it was an unnecessary risk for us.
“A pretty pointless thing to do.
“I mean, they’re probably happy because they got points on us but karma will come around and we’ll get our opportunity to get them back.”
Burling added: “As skippers, we might need to pitch in for some anger management lessons for Tom.
“I think it’s a bit out of line the amount of swear words he was saying over the race management channel after the incident.”
