SailGP Championship: From towering catamarans racing at 60mph to $12.8m in prize money. Is this F1 on the water?

Humans have sailed the oceans for centuries. But, as a spectator sport, sailing has barely made a dent in the public consciousness, outside of the Olympics at least. There’s no denying that it can often be difficult to make sense of what’s going on way out there on the water, for a start.

But the SailGP Championship has set out to prove watching sailboat racing can be thrilling, entertaining and even get you jumping off the sofa and yelling at your TV.

Every aspect of this global competition — the boats, the track, the sudden-death format — has been designed to grab attention. The aim has been to turn heads, generate excitement and engage people who have previously never shown any interest in sailing.

And now you’ll be able to follow the action with The Athletic too, as we bring our fan-first approach to global sports coverage to SailGP, taking you inside the championship and telling you everything you need to know about a competition that has been likened to Formula 1 on water.

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SailGP in a nutshell

SailGP is a high-speed, close-to-shore international sailing championship consisting of 12 national teams who race identical F50 catamarans head-to-head at 13 venues around the world over a 12-month season.

For 2024-25, which runs from November to November, the competition takes the six-person teams to five continents. Three Grands Prix are held in the United States (Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York), while England, Germany, Spain, Brazil, Switzerland, France and Italy also host race weekends. The season-ending round will be in Abu Dhabi.

So far, the competition has been open, with multiple winners across the opening three Grands Prix in Dubai, New Zealand and Australia. Each race weekend, the 12 teams compete in five races, three on the Saturday and two on Sunday. The top three teams from those five then progress to a winner-takes-all final race.

The boat: Meet the F50

Most boats float on the surface of the water. The F50, on the other hand, is a lightweight carbon-fiber catamaran that uses intricately designed and engineered hydrofoils to launch the body of the boat above the water, massively reducing the hydrodynamic drag and attaining a level of efficiency that was once unthinkable.

The unique aspect of SailGP is that all its F50s are identical, which helps keep costs down and competition tight. The difference between winning and losing comes down to the skill and strategy of the athletes controlling them.

With the F50 ‘foiling’ above the surface of the ocean, it is capable of speeds over 60mph (100 kilometers an hour) — a pace so rapid that even the petrol-powered chase boats can’t keep up.

Once these high-tech catamarans are flying along above the water, they can travel at over three times the speed of the wind, with athletes on board experiencing G-forces of up to three times their body weight during the tight maneuvers around the congested race track. A sailor who weighs, for example, 80kg (176 pounds; 12st 8lb) will feel the weight of 240kg on their body.

Propelling F50s at breakneck speeds is potentially dangerous, which is why the sailors wear body armor and crash helmets. They are permanently tethered to a retaining line on the boat to prevent them from falling overboard.

Even with all these safety measures in place, injuries do happen from time to time.

At the SailGP Auckland event at the end of January, for example, Canada’s Billy Gooderham was injured when he was hit by a wall of water, shattering his crash helmet and causing him to be rushed to hospital. Thankfully, X-rays later revealed that nothing had been broken.

Who is behind SailGP?

American billionaire Larry Ellison made his fortune helping build Oracle Corporation into one of the world’s most successful software businesses. Over the decades, Ellison — fourth on Forbes’ ‘Real Time Billionaires List’ — has spent a good part of his wealth on various forms of sailboat racing.

From a near-death experience in the 600-mile Sydney Hobart Race in Australia to twice winning the America’s Cup, the world’s oldest international sporting competition, Ellison’s passion for sailing has been one of enduring enthusiasm.

New Zealand’s Russell Coutts, one of the most successful competitive sailors of all time, masterminded those two America’s Cup victories for Ellison (in Valencia, Spain, in 2010 and San Francisco three years later).

Having lost the America’s Cup in 2017, however, Coutts and Ellison turned their minds to an idea they had been kicking around for years: would it be possible to create a sailboat racing circuit that was truly commercially viable and capable of being self-sustaining without large cash injections from privately wealthy individuals?

Just over a year later, in late 2018, Coutts unveiled his grand plan — SailGP was born.

How similar (and different) is SailGP to F1?

SailGP shares some similarities with Formula 1, the pinnacle of professional motor racing.

Coutts makes no secret of his desire to emulate the commercial success of F1, to the point where he has even thrown out the traditional language of sailing. Crew members are called ‘athletes’ not sailors, the skippers are ‘drivers’ and boat speeds are measured not in nautical knots or even in miles per hour but in kilometres per hour (partly because you sometimes see them exceed that nice round number of 100km/h).

Whereas in F1 there are constructors’ and drivers’ championships, in SailGP there is only one title at stake. In SailGP, winning the start is important, but there is no pole position as in F1. All 12 teams are jostling for the best position on the start line until the gun fires, with the aim being to be flying above the water at full speed as the front of your F50 crosses the start line right on the ‘B’ of that bang.

Judging time and distance at high speed is no easy job — hit the start line too soon and the umpires will message to slow down until the rest of the fleet have gone past you. Some teams prefer to get in position early, although this means they have limited space and opportunity to get up to full speed before the gun fires. Others like to sit off and make a timed run towards the line from a long way back.

In F1, data is king and is guarded from rival teams. In SailGP, all the race data is shared centrally, the aim being to keep the gap between the front and the back of the fleet as short as possible. Immediately after a race weekend, you can bet other crews will be poring over all that data for the smallest clues of how to improve performance.

Both F1 and SailGP place strong limits on practice time.

For SailGP, a big reason for this is because the teams’ equipment spends so much time traversing the globe in a stack of 40ft shipping containers. But it’s also to keep a limit on costs, though the lack of practice time does make it challenging for the less-experienced crews to close the performance gap on the veteran teams from Australia, Great Britain and New Zealand.

The vagaries of the wind

The race course is never the same twice in a wind-powered sport such as SailGP. There could be a mild breeze, a storm, or sometimes no wind at all.

To adapt to various weather conditions, much like having different tires for different race conditions in F1, the F50 catamarans are equipped with three different wing sizes — 18m (59ft), 24m, and 29m — as well as interchangeable sizes of hydrofoils and rudders (the latter are used for steering).

The smallest wing is used in strong winds to maintain control, the largest gets deployed in light winds to maximize power, and the middle-sized one serves as an all-purpose option. Similarly, the size of the hydrofoils and rudders varies according to changes in the wind strength.

The size of wing teams must use in a race is decided by the race organizers and all teams must use the same ones. In lighter winds, the F50 relies on the biggest set of foils to generate the lift to break clear of the water’s surface and get up and foiling. In stronger winds, getting on the foils is much easier and the smaller set of hydrofoils creates less drag in the sea, resulting in the highest speeds.

The crew: Who does what on board?

Success in the F50s requires not only physical strength but split-second decision-making and constant communication too. Each individual’s role is vital to a team’s success.

The best crews are a tight-knit bunch who implicitly understand the needs of their teammates with only minimal communication. It’s vital that everyone is in tune with the boat’s pre-agreed set moves.

There are usually six athletes on board each F50 — a strategist, a driver, a wing trimmer, a flight controller and two grinders.

• Grinders: The engine room. Their job is to generate power for the wing trimmer to adjust the wing in and out as the wind varies.
• Wing trimmer: Constantly adjusts the wing sail for maximum speed.
• Flight controller: Manages the ride height of the boat above the water, aiming to avoid any costly nosedives or crashes.
• Strategist: Reads the ever-changing wind, making tactical decisions either to attack or defend.
• Driver: The figurehead and a team’s highest earner, steering and making the final decisions about positioning.

In light winds, race organizers might instruct teams to drop to as few as four people to make the F50s lighter. When this happens, the teams are in charge of deciding who they keep on board.

As with other forms of professional sport, the salaries can vary enormously from team to team. For many of the athletes, the prize money — across this season there is a $12.8million (£10m) prize pool up for grabs — often outweighs their basic salary, which tends to be around $50,000 per season.

How does the championship format work?

Success depends on consistency. The aim is to score well enough from the five fleet races across a weekend to earn a place in the top three who progress to the winner-takes-all final race.

Going from the more conservative points-accumulation parts of the weekend to that 10-minute sudden-death final race demands a complete switch of mindset. Some sailors are more naturally suited to a cautious, patient approach, whereas others throw caution to the wind. Neither approach is right or wrong, it’s a matter of applying the mindset that best matches the moment.

At the season finale, the three top-performing teams from across the season face off in a single, winner-takes-all showdown for the title and a $2million prize. A team can be dominant all season yet lose in the grand final — which is exactly what we saw last season in San Francisco, with Australia toppled from the top of the leaderboard as Spain swooped in to take the championship in a masterfully executed smash-and-grab.

How do you win a race?

Each race lasts a maximum of 16 minutes. The fleet launch out of a timed start and accelerate to speeds close to 100kmh as they converge on Mark 1.

Getting around Mark 1 first brings a huge advantage, so there’s enormous emphasis on winning the launch out of the start. Then, the fleet turn downwind towards the bottom of the course for a fast and furious two laps before a high-speed finish, usually positioned to give spectators on shore a grandstand view as the F50s blast across the finish line.

There are three key strategies to winning a race: finding more wind to sail your boat faster through the water, using superior techniques to travel quicker in conditions that are the same for everybody, and identifying wind shifts and angles to navigate a shorter distance around the course.

Sailing is totally powered by nature. You have to zig-zag your way around the course, searching for the best breeze and steering at the optimal angle to the wind.

Wind: the invisible power source

How do sailors see wind? It creates ripples on the surface of the water, giving clues as to where the strongest gusts are likely to be. Spotting wind shifts is even trickier — you have to look at how gusts move along the course. The shape and movement of these gusts become second nature to experienced sailors.

There’s a lot to take in at once — reading the subtleties of the wind, as well as the current on the water in tidal venues such as San Francisco — which is why SailGP attracts the best sailors in the world, many of them Olympic gold medallists and world champions from other branches of professional sailing.

Who are the teams to watch?

Australia, skippered by Tom Slingsby, are an ever-present threat. The Flying Roos won the first three seasons of SailGP before being beaten to the punch last year by Spain in the final race. Past seasons have seen New Zealand showing strong form, but the Kiwis — headed up by three-time America’s Cup winner Pete Burling — are struggling in mid-pack so far this year.

Leading the standings after the first three events are the Brits, with new driver Dylan Fletcher on an impressive learning curve in his first season at the helm of Emirates GBR. On the other hand, the United States are struggling in 11th. Taylor Canfield’s crew will be looking to turn their season around at the forthcoming events on home waters, in Los Angeles this weekend, then San Francisco on March 22-23.

What does the remaining 2025 calendar look like?

Los Angeles, U.S.: March 15-16

San Francisco, U.S.: March 22-23

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: May 3-4

New York, U.S.: June 7-8

Portsmouth, UK: July 19-20

Sassnitz, Germany: August 16-17

Saint-Tropez, France: September 12-13

Geneva, Switzerland: September 20-21

Andalucia-Cadiz, Spain: October 4-5

Abu Dhabi: November 29-30

I’m convinced. How do I watch?

You can watch SailGP live or catch highlights on broadcast partners around the world, as well as through the official SailGP app and social media channels. In the United States, racing is live on CBS Sports, and in the UK, you’ll find it on TNT Sports.

(Top photo: SailGP; design: Demetrius Robinson)