**Ben Glover is in San Francisco courtesy of Sail GP, covering the final race of the 2021/2022 championship and Australia’s quest for $1.4 million
Australia’s Sail GP team is $1.4 million richer after thrashing Japan and the USA in the season’s three-boat grand final.
In an incredibly drama-packed final day of the season, Australia held its nerve to sail to victory in a decider that had to be restarted after a whale swam onto the course in San Francisco Bay.
That could have been a deflating moment for the Tom Slingsby-led Australian team after they had powered away from Japan and the USA and looked almost certain winners despite copping a penalty at the start line.
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But they were able to keep their composure and put on a masterclass at the start line when the race was restarted, finding a gust of wind on a course that was almost dead still and establishing a lead of as much as 500 metres by the first mark. But for one tense moment when they fell off the foils in light wind, briefly inviting both the USA and Japan back into the race, it was an early advantage that they never looked like blowing.
After the race Slingsby said he was proud of his team’s ability to deal with adversity.
“We’ve been through a lot of things,” Slingsby said. “Four out of the six (Australian) sailing team were part of the 8-1 (America’s Cup) comeback here in 2013.
“A lot of people talk about Jimmy (Spithill, skipper of Oracle Team USA in that extraordinary 34th America’s Cup victory), how Jimmy had this amazing comeback on San Francisco waters but no one realised that four out of our six sailors were actually part of that.
“I just know that with my team if things are going against us we’re never going to give up. We’ve proven it time and time again and I have faith and confidence in our team. It’s amazing. With everything going on with our team, whales – I didn’t see a whale but apparently there was a whale out there when we were leading and I was like, ‘is this a joke or is it actually happening?’ – and I knew that no matter what was thrown at us, the more that was thrown at us and thrown at the fleet, I knew that our guys had been through it all before and we’re not going to get rattled, and we’re going to perform when the pressure’s on and we did again today.
“It’s good for us. We know as soon as the pressure’s on we’re going to be hard to beat. We perform better when the pressure’s on.”
The USA crew was lucky just to be participating in the final after its day was almost ruined in the first race by a reckless manoeuvre from the Spanish boat, smashing into their opponents as they rounded the mark.
That crash ended Spain’s Grand Prix, with the collision putting a huge hole in their boat. While it also damaged the back of the USA’s boat and could have put it out of the grand final, some running repairs were made in the water that miraculously revived the home team’s hopes of winning the lucrative cash prize.
USA, led by legendary Australian sailor Spithill, actually managed to fire the first shot of the grand final, getting an incredible start and leading around the first mark.
But an outstanding tack by the third placed Australia instantly flipped the script, putting Slingsby’s crew into a lead that looked set to be decisive before the mischievous whale conspired to intervene.
The dramatic moment that forced the race to be abandoned completely changed the complexion of the grand final, with a strong westerly wind that was blowing straight down the course from the Golden Gate Bridge giving way for an unreliable southerly.
From a wind that was powering the boats up and down the course at speeds of close to 90 km/h, the three crews found themselves in conditions that at times slowed the boats to speeds closer to 10 km/h, forcing the three drivers of Slingsby, Spithill and Japan’s Nathan Outteridge to completely rethink their strategy.
And it was Slingsby who won the battle of the mind games, taking a completely different line to Japan and the USA as the three boats approached the starting line, before finding a gust of wind that powered Australia to a gigantic lead at the first mark, controlling the grand final and clinching the whopping $1.4 million prize to be shared between the six sailors on the winning boat and their support staff.
While the rich prize for crossing the line first in the winner-takes-all grand final is a huge incentive for all the sailors who race Sail GP boats, Slingsby said it was the glory of defeating the world’s best sailors that was sweetest.
“You talk about all these amazing sailors and who’s actually the best sailors and what’s the best team around the world, but everyone’s been in different types of boats,” Slingsby said.
“If it’s the America’s Cup they’ve got different designs and one boat’s faster than the other but to be here with all even boats and Australia came out on top, we can call ourselves the best sailors in the world. That’s more important than the money, that’s more important than anything, that we can say we’re the best sailors in the world.
“Money comes and goes but glory lasts forever, I think that’s the saying, and we really feel it is like that.”
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