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1 Sailing Bigger and Faster, SailGP Back where it all Began In Sydney

By Nick Mulvenney

SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP go back to where everything started in Sydney this weekend and 6 years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees a bright future for the innovative worldwide sailing league.

An Olympic champ and skipper of three Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts coordinated with Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of the Oracle software application company, to introduce the series with 6 groups all owned by the league.

While the inaugural season which started in Sydney in February 2019 included simply 5 rounds, elearnportal.science this weekend's race will be the 3rd round of 13 the now 12-strong fleet will contest on the 2025-26 schedule.

"It's simply amazing, in fact, the uptake and number of events now," SailGP president Coutts informed Reuters at the Sydney Opera House on Friday.

"We're certainly sitting at 13, and aiming to increase that over the next seasons to someplace around 20. If you compare that to Formula One that has 24, that's sort of where we desire to get to. So yeah, the future appearances excellent."

The idea of Formula One on water is implicit in the league's name and the comparison is not far from the mark when the world's finest sailors press the F50 foiling catamarans to their limits at what are spectacular speeds for waterborne vessels.

"We didn't set out to just interest the devoted sailing fan, we try to make this sport reasonable and explainable for all sports fans," Coutts added.

"Most of our fans are not devoted sailors, which's one of the reasons why we have actually grown so quickly. We are appealing to individuals that simply like viewing a race, they don't have to understand anything about sailboats."

A bumper crowd of 25,000 ticketed fans turned out to watch Tom Slingsby's Australia group win the 2nd round of the series in Auckland last month.

"I believe you'll see several of our occasions this year now like that, possibly even topping that," said Coutts, a 62-year-old New Zealander.

"The most crucial thing is the fans viewing on broadcast ... however the fan experience on site is likewise extremely essential. We desire fans to come and have a terrific time and see some excellent racing."

Technological innovation is integral to SailGP and numerous countless data points are relayed from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for making use of race organisers, addsub.wiki teams and to help the audience experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is delighted about some more innovations coming online as Artificial Intelligence is progressively used to work through the mountain of data.

"The big advancement for us going forward is the 360 degree view from on board the boat, with listening to the team comms," he said.

"The viewer will be taken on board and ride in addition to the Australian team in a race, and be able to browse anywhere they desire. That's the future."

There have, naturally, been challenges over the six years with the second season interfered with by the COVID pandemic and race days still often at the mercy of wind conditions.

A shortage of F50s meant the French team was not able to contend at this year's season-opening race in Dubai and damage to the boat once they got it ruled them out of the Auckland leg.

The full fleet of 12 boats will therefore race for the very first time this weekend and one of the most pleasing elements for Coutts is that all but among the teams are, or yogicentral.science quickly will be, privately owned or wiki.die-karte-bitte.de run.

"These groups are now costing $50 million, I would never have predicted that this early," said Coutts, who prepares to bring another number of teams on board next year.

"We understood that that was the whole method the design was established, that group owners would have the ability to trade their groups and ideally earn money out of it, but I didn't think we 'd attain it this early. That's been a great surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, modifying by Michael Perry)