Speed is rooted in SailGP’s DNA

The phrase ‘Speed Kills’ has been a slogan in various road safety campaigns worldwide, and was the name of a horrible John Travolta movie about a speedboat racing champion. Those two words are easily understood, and as SailGP driver Phil Robertson explains, are integral to the success of the burgeoning sports league:

Before I joined SailGP I’d maybe only gone 37 knots on a boat, and that was on a GC32 in the Extreme Sailing Series. Joining SailGP, that changed of course, and I can remember going 40 knots for the first time – it was actually quite scary, because it was so new.

You’re going into the unknown: you don’t know what’s going to happen, how the boat’s going to react. If it goes wrong how wrong is it going to go at that speed? I really vividly remember my first crash, a high-speed nose dive where we got a little bit high. It was in the first season of SailGP, and not knowing how it was going to go or what was going to happen next was pretty scary. – Full report