SailGP organizers yesterday said that the ultra-fast catamaran series is considering fitting the fleet with air bags and Kevlar safety straps after two sailors were seriously injured in the previous series of races.
Two weeks ago, New Zealand grinder Louis Sinclair broke both his legs and France’s Manon Audinet spent two weeks in hospital with a chest injury when their boats crashed in a race off Auckland, New Zealand.
SailGP chief executive officer Russell Coutts said on the eve of the Sydney races that the series is continuing its review into the Auckland crash, the most serious since the league’s inception in 2019.
Photo: AP
Coutts said that SailGP is satisfied with the immediate emergency response, but would investigate whether better safety equipment could be implemented to minimize risk.
“There are a whole host of ideas,” Coutts told reporters. “Could you have air bags on the inside of the cockpit? A Kevlar strap [could] be on the outside of the cockpit, for example, stopping a penetration” by another boat.
Sailors expect accidents when 13 identical 50-foot foiling catamarans jostle for space on a tight course at speeds topping 100kph.
Tom Slingsby, skipper of the Australian team who won the Auckland event, said he does not expect more crashes this weekend on Sydney Harbour.
“Getting rainy easterlies at this time of year is very uncommon,” Slingsby said. “This weekend’s forecast, I don’t see any danger [of more crashes]. It should be moderate breezes, light to moderate breezes.”
However, Slingsby said that accidents are part of the high-speed racing.
“It’s an extreme sport and we will have injuries,” he said. “As for the incident in Auckland, it’s tough, there’s no way of putting on an exciting show without a level of risk.”
Slingsby, whose Australia team includes actors Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds as co-owners, believes sailors want that risk reduced, but not removed.
“We’ve trained our whole lives for these situations and we want to be out there pushing our skills to the limit, not dulling them down in the name of safety,” he said. “At the same time, we don’t want to see people hurt. It’s a fine line.”
The French and New Zealand boats are absent for the Sydney event.
SailGP is hopeful that damage to the French boat would be repaired in time for Quentin Delapierre’s team to line up in the next regatta off Rio de Janeiro in April.
However, New Zealand’s hopes of reaching this season’s US$2 million event final are in jeopardy as the crew expects to miss Sydney, Rio and possibly the two events to follow.
Twilight racing — the seventh time SailGP has been raced on Sydney Harbour — is to be held today and tomorrow, with the winning boat to be determined tomorrow.
“I don’t remember the moment, but ever since I was a kid, that’s the first thing I loved,” two-time NBA All-Star Isaiah Thomas said of his lifelong romance with basketball. However, that journey unfolded against the limitations of his size in a game where height often dictates opportunity — a reality he confronted throughout his career. At 175cm, Thomas is less than 2cm taller than the average Taiwanese adult male, while NBA players during his career stood at about 200cm on average. Compared with the NBA’s average career length of less than five years, Thomas’ 13-season career stands out as
Hans Niemann declares he would become a “stone cold killer” in a Netflix documentary released on Tuesday about his feud with five-time classical world champion Magnus Carlsen, a pledge that injects new edge into the lingering fallout from the cheating scandal that shook elite chess. “I’m gonna be a stone cold killer the rest of my life,” the US’ Niemann says in the film. “I’m going to become the best player in the world, and no one is going to believe that now, but this clip will play over and over again in 10 years — just wait.” “I just
Dakar and Rabat have longstanding ties, but relations have been strained since the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) final, which Senegal won in mid-January before being stripped of the title, which was transferred to Morocco. Now, the AFCON trophy is something of a thorn in the two countries’ sides. On Rue Mohamed V, the street where Moroccan vendors are based in the Senegalese capital, a police van is parked. “The police have been on high alert since the Confederation of African Football [CAF] decided to award the title to Morocco, but there have been no incidents,” a local resident said.
Top seeded Jessica Pegula on Friday once again fought back from a set down to reach the WTA Charleston Open semi-finals with a 3-6, 6-3, 6-2 win against Russia’s Diana Shnaider. Defending champion Pegula has lost the first set in all three of her matches at the tournament so far, but again dug deep to maintain her hopes of retaining the title. The world No. 5 from the US took 2 hours, 10 minutes to defeat 19th-ranked Shnaider, relying on a formidable service game that included eight aces. Shnaider battled well in the first two sets and broke early for a 2-0 lead
RSS