OUT OF THE BLOCKS

SailGP’s fiat is to make its next season better than the last, and that’s true for the US team, which returned in Dubai as a podium player.

DAVE REED

THE smile cemented on Russell Coutts’ face was telling when, on the eve of SailGP’s fifth-season start in Dubai, the professional sailing league’s visionary founder and puppeteer announced that Rolex had signed a nine-season deal worth who knows what. He’d already locked in Mubadala (Abu Dhabi’s investment machine), inked Emirates Airlines for five years, and secured global-shipping giant DP World to move the threering circus around the globe to 13 different venues on multiple continents. Jimmy Spithill’s all-new Red Bull Italy team was revealed on the heels of a new Brazilian outfit with Martine Grael as the league’s first female driver, bringing the lineup to a dozen privately funded teams. Musical chairs and offseason crew poaching had social feeds buzzing, and game-changing T-foils and jet-propulsion boosters are on the way. All…

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Sailing World (Digital) - 1 Issue, Winter 2025

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