Spain SailGP Team snags San Francisco repeat

Spain has triumphed once again in San Francisco, defeating NorthStar Canada (2nd) and France (3rd) to become the fifth winner in five events this season. Despite a catastrophic wing collapse at the start of race seven, Australia moves into first overall. All athletes are accounted for with no injuries on-board. The cause of the incident is not yet known.

In a nail-biting winner-takes-all final race, France hit the line flying, surging ahead to win the sprint to mark one. But after splitting the course at the second gate, Spain raced away with the lead, sweeping the line in first ahead of Canada in second and Les Bleus in third.

Celebrating her first win of the season, Los Gallos strategist Nicole van der Velden said, “It feels amazing to win. It was super tight racing and we were really happy with our weekend, to come out on top and get into the final.”

Van der Velden continued, “We were feeling quite confident with how we were sailing and how we were starting, so super happy to finish it off well in the final. It’s great to get two-for-two in San Francisco. Now, a little bit of celebration and back to focus for the next event.”

Absent from the podium race was the Australia SailGP Team, who finished third on points after race seven, but was unable to compete after the stunning wing collapse. Speaking just moments after the incident, driver Tom Slingsby said, “Fortunately, we’re all safe and that’s the first priority. Now we just have to try to save the boat as best we can.”

“It’s heartbreaking,” Slingsby continued, “Obviously the results and the points are what they are, but we’re not even concerned about that. Just save the boat the best we can, everyone is safe and we’ve got a lot of work to do here.”

With salvage underway, SailGP teams will now begin an in-depth analysis to determine what caused the incident. “We’ve got to go look at the camera angles,” Slingsby said. “It was obviously close to the other boats, we need to determine if it was a wing failure, or was there something else at play? Did we make an error, or did the boat fail?”

In the opening fleet race of the day (race five), France’s Quentin Delapierre showed his strength at speed. Crossing the line in first, a post-finish penalty for interfering with Emirates GBR – still racing – bumped Les Bleus to second and Switzerland into first.

Spain took the win in fleet race six ahead of Australia in second and New Zealand in third. While fleet race seven went the way of the Kiwis, unfortunately, it wasn’t enough for the Black Foils after a mixed weekend for the team. Driver Peter Burling said, “We’re a little frustrated to be honest. When we put it all together, we were there this weekend, but not quite enough to get into the final. It wasn’t meant to be.”

New Zealand finished fifth on the event leaderboard, moving down to fourth overall. Emirates GBR finished seventh in the event – a weekend in which driver Dylan Fletcher said felt like the team "couldn't catch a break.” With the points tallied, Emirates GBR moves from first to second in the championship standings.

Coming in last in the event standings, U.S. SailGP Team flight controller Hans Henken expressed his disappointment, “We didn’t get the result we wanted here. We put in a lot of work leading into San Francisco – a lot of those things are going on behind the scenes but the results don’t show it. Obviously, we need to go back and put more work into it. The story is not over, we’re continuing to push really hard.”

Thousands turned out to watch the action from a sold-out Race Stadium, framed by the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz and San Francisco skyline. The most exciting racing on water returns May 3-4, with the Enel Rio Sail Grand Prix – the first SailGP event in South America – followed by a third and final U.S. event, the Mubadala New York Sail Grand Prix (June 7-8).