Blurring the line between sport and entertainment
by Mark Jardine 18 Aug 19:00 BST
Mubadala Brazil SailGP Team following an nosedive during a practice session ahead of the Germany Sail Grand Prix in Sassnitz © Ricardo Pinto for SailGP
Crashes gain clicks. It's a simple reality that the voyeur in all of us is drawn to situations where things have gone spectacularly wrong.
Throughout the years, be it in motor racing, or on the evening news, media outlets have clambered for the dramatic pictures and videos of incidents which helped them sell newspapers or draw people to watch their show.
We're now living in a world where clambering for exposure on social media can be all-consuming. Everyone is looking for the next viral reel so they can tout the clicks to the brand which has hired or supported them. Outdoing each other in this manner is inevitably a race to the bottom.
Sailing in the past couple of weeks has seen more than its fair share of dramatic moments which have become viral sensations. Allagrande Mapei and Holcim-PRB's crash moments into Leg 1 of The Ocean Race Europe left both racing against time to make the Leg 2 start on Sunday (which thankfully they did). This was followed by Mubadala Brazil SailGP's spectacular main beam failure in practice on Friday at Sassnitz, which happened only moments after the French SailGP Team's starboard rudder flew off.
These incidents gain media exposure for The Ocean Race and SailGP, but raise serious questions about the very fine balancing act of sport, entertainment and safety.
The Ocean Race Europe is taking place using the same IMOCA yachts that have become so popular thanks to the Vendée Globe. They are fully-crewed in The Ocean Race, but they're still a handful to manoeuvre, and are inherently far better suited to the open ocean than inshore sprints.
The legs of The Ocean Race are short compared to many races the IMOCA fleet sail, but they're exciting and allow the event to visit multiple cities, putting these spectacular 60 footers in front of new audiences who can find out more about sailing in one day than they ever have before. It's a great race which builds momentum towards The Ocean Race itself.
The bonus points though for the initial sprint to the scoring gate at the beginning of each leg are where the problem lies. Clambering for these points leads to the boats going out over-canvassed and on the very edge of control. It doesn't take much of a gust to broach in an IMOCA, and that's exactly what happened during the Leg 1 start in Kiel, and the fleet of seven yachts was quickly and brutally reduced to five in a matter of seconds.
This, in my opinion, is an example of entertainment becoming more important than the sport, and in the process, compromising safety. I am over the moon that the shore teams of Allagrande Mapei and Holcim-PRB managed to complete repairs - hats off to them for this - and then reach Portsmouth via the Kiel Canal in time for the Leg 2 start, but it was very noticeable how teams talked about taking a conservative approach to The Needles scoring gate. The all-or-nothing approach was rightly off the cards, but not going all-out in a race damages the sporting integrity, which leads me to think that it's time to scrap the Scoring Gate in The Ocean Race Europe, or if that's not possible for this race then definitely for The Ocean Race itself. Exposure is vital for sailing, but not at any cost.
SailGP has always known how to sensationalise things. This is a circuit that refers to itself as a sporting property, and is undoubtedly bridging the gap between sailing and a new and wider fanbase. There are followers of SailGP who wouldn't have known a thing about sailing if they hadn't watched the F50s racing, be that on TV, YouTube, Instagram or Tiktok reel, or in person. It is designed from the ground-up to be sports entertainment. Yes, the sporting integrity is important, but it's well understood that the format and venues will bring an element of chance to the results.
In many ways sailing has always been thus. Rivals may benefit from a gust or windshift which was impossible to see beforehand. Luck plays its part, but is generally evened out over a regatta series, so SailGP is only taking what has always happened in sailing and turning the dial up to 11.
So much of SailGP though is about the numbers. Terabytes of data come off the boats during every race, the social media teams report back with all the views and clicks on their channels, and the quest for more and more speed continues.
One number that has been particularly fixated on is 100km/h. Kilometres per hour is still an odd metric to measure a boat's speed, but it does inherently produce bigger numbers than talking in knots. 55.9957 (let's round it up to 56 knots) just doesn't sound as fast as 100km/h.
The top speed in SailGP racing had stood at 99.94km/h since the France SailGP Team set the mark in 2022 in Saint Tropez, and the determination to beat that has been a key goal. Moving to T-foils was key to the mark being shattered this weekend, with ROCKWOOL Denmark clocking 103.93 km/h, but sadly that wasn't all that shattered in Sassnitz.
Reliability has become a major problem in SailGP and seeing the Brazilian F50 collapse when the main crossbeam failed was frightening. I applaud the sailors who talked about the incident in such a matter-of-fact and understated way, but the SailGP social media teams went to town sensationalising it.
I don't know if the switch to T-foils is directly the reason we've seen so many structural failures in the F50s recently, but it's hard to ignore the correlation. Has the quest for speed been at the cost of the sailors' safety? Either way, sensationalising the incidents with capitalised INSANE and WILD titles and thumbnails may get the numbers, but is going to be a very bad look if someone is seriously injured or killed. I hope and pray it never happens, but worry that too many compromises are being made.
Sport is entertainment in its own right, and the stories that are created from real sporting endeavour are hugely engaging. Stars like Tom Slingsby, Hannah Mills, Martine Grael, Cole Brauer, Charlie Dalin, Boris Herrmann, Sam Goodchild, and a host of other amazing athletes are drawing people into sailing without sensationalist narratives.
Outside of the pro circuits, big fleet sailing is very much alive and kicking at a host of events around the world.
This week I'm lucky enough to be witnessing the Flying Fifteen World Championship in Weymouth, UK, where 82 teams are relishing ideal conditions. Big fleet racing in a fresh breeze with big waves makes for incredible spectating, and by all accounts is some of the best competition that the sailors have enjoyed. There may not be the grandstands and the dock-outs, but this is the heart of the sport. The boat may have been designed in 1948, but it's still quick, and it surfs down a wave as well as any modern design.
The Flying Fifteen, like many global dinghy and small keelboat classes, proves that top level competition is accessible in sailing and that fun and sport can be very effectively combined. Yes, a new boat will set you back a fair whack, but there are plenty of competitive second-hand Flying Fifteens available which will get you into the fleet and near the front if you have the skill.
The atmosphere in the fleet is fantastic, with a thriving social programme and welcoming sailors who are more than happy to share their settings with up and coming sailors.
There are no stadiums for the spectators, but a huge audience is following this event around the world through the daily reports, and I thank all of you who use Sail-World.com, YachtsandYachting.com and our @Sail-World.com YouTube channel to get their daily sailing news fix. We're enjoying record readership and viewership, hopefully without over-sensationalising our coverage. Sport is entertainment, and the sailing which is happening globally right now is hugely enjoyable to follow and to cover.
Mark Jardine
Sail-World.com and YachtsandYachting.com Managing Editor