Tom Slingsby had his buck’s party last weekend and has been walking around Barangaroo this week with paintball bruises all over his legs. On Wednesday, he will get married.
Ordinarily, you would think a groom would be lying low in the days before his nuptials, but the Olympic gold medallist will spend his last weekend of unmarried life living on the edge in one of the most dangerous sports on the planet.
The global catamaran racing event known as SailGP makes its pitch as Formula One on water but that undersells one key aspect: it’s possibly even more dangerous than driving a car at 300km/h around the streets of Monaco.
“We don’t want to be known as a super dangerous sport, but I think anyone who comes out and watches us on the water, or sees us go by, realises pretty quickly it’s an extreme sport,” Australia’s SailGP skipper Slingsby says.
“I’ve come off a few times and been knocked unconscious because of the speed you fall off the boats. The water is like concrete.”
Against the backdrop of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Opera House and Shark Island, the world’s fastest boats will scream around a designated course this weekend in the latest leg of the global series.
Team Australia in a practice session on Sydney Harbour this week.Credit:Wolter Peeters
Unlike its motor car equivalent, where team success is usually associated with the money poured in by each manufacturer, each F50 catamaran, which has sails as high as 28 metres, is identical, making racing a true test of individual skill.
The boats, worth about $5.8 million each, virtually hover above the water at speeds of 54 knots, or 100km/h.
Australia’s wing trimmer Kyle Langford says: “Everybody uses the car analogy that we’re going the same speed as a car on the motorway, which is true, but we don’t have an engine on board. We’re getting powered by the wind, which is what makes it so impressive.
“And you know if you make a mistake, the consequences are huge. That’s probably the biggest thing.
“We had a big crash in San Francisco last year where we fell off the foils and nosedived. The boat went from 50 knots to stopping in half a second. We had this wall of water which came over the boat and it’s like being in a car crash. We lost our goggles, our helmets and all the gear was flying off. I lost a shoe. That was just due to the impact.”
Ironically, the Sweden-based Langford suffered his most serious injury of the last couple of years back home recently.
He stepped no more than a metre off a leisure boat to a dock and felt a twinge in his back. He was later diagnosed with a bulging disc, a complication he says from the long-haul flight back to Europe shortly beforehand.
It’s not only the speed they need to deal with, but also the screeching pitch sound created by the hydrofoils lifting the boat on top of the water.
Team Australia prepare for the Sydney leg this weekend.Credit:Wolter Peeters
Says Great Britain skipper Ben Ainslie: “The bit where it really starts to get a bit sketchy is when we get up to about 100 kilometres an hour and the foils start cavitating because the water is literally bubbling as it’s going around the foil.
“At that point you’re really praying the designers and engineers have got their maths right and the thing is going to hold together.”
Slingsby’s Australia will start the Sydney leg as season leaders from New Zealand and Great Britain. There are just two more events before the San Francisco finale. The top three teams will wage a $1.4 million match race.
Slingsby says: “You do something consistently, and you lose a bit of that thrill and the adrenaline of going fast, but for me, the adrenaline comes when we start racing when all nine boats are jockeying for position on the start.
“We don’t have the wave drag and the chop and there’s pretty much no boats on Sydney Harbour that could keep up with us. If Waterways or Maritime wanted to give us a ticket for speeding, they actually wouldn’t be able to catch us in most conditions.
“They would need us to slow down for them to catch up.”
‘Emirates want more SailGP and less Formula One’: Great Britain boss
Great Britain’s most successful sailor in Olympic Games history says SailGP’s sustainability focus was a key driver behind the airline dumping Formula One to partner with his world-class team.
Sir Ben Ainslie, who won the first of his four Olympic gold medals in Sydney, has returned to the harbour city to unveil Emirates as the maiden title partner of an individual SailGP team. The partnership will be for the next three years.
Sir Ben Ainslie’s Great Britain will sail one of the leading boats on Sydney Harbour.Credit:Getty
The revolutionary series, in its third season, has marketed itself as Formula One on water and is now taking that body’s commercial partners after Emirates ended talks with the motor car equivalent late last year.
Ainslie says: “It’s still relatively early days and the potential [for SailGP] is massive. Emirates is one of the biggest brands in sport and to be partnered with us, we’re very proud.
“The growth is really strong and the key to ensure we keep that going. It’s not unique, but I think one of the key elements is the sustainability factor. More and more businesses are realising their partnerships have to have sustainability at the forefront of it. This is genuinely the leading event or league in the sports world in that respect.
“You speak to Emirates, they’re coming out of Formula 1 and coming to this league because it has everything they’re looking for in terms of high-quality racing which is spectacular, but sustainability all over it.”
Ainslie will be considered the biggest threat to Australia’s SailGP dominance on home waters in a two-day regatta that starts on Saturday.
“I’m not just saying it because we’re here, but it’s genuinely my favourite place to sail anywhere in the world,” he said. “It’s got everything.
“You generally get good breeze and it shifts around a little bit so it can be quite tricky. You get so many boats out on the harbour, which is fantastic. If you’re a fan of the sport, to be here it’s kind of like a mecca of sailing being on this harbour.”
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