Black Foils struggle to compete on opening day of SailGP Sydney

The Black Foils sit ninth after the opening day of racing in Sydney. Photo / Bob Martin, SailGP.

It’s been a long time since the Black Foils have been this uncompetitive.

In the past two seasons, the New Zealand SailGP team have been among the two best crews in the global foiling league. In the 24 events across seasons three and four, the Black Foils featured in 14 podium races.

Even when they missed the podium races, the Kiwis would still put up a fight.

On the opening day of this weekend’s event in Sydney, however, the Black Foils struggled to compete.

In the four races of the opening day’s competition, the New Zealanders finished eighth, seventh and 11th twice to end the day ninth on the leaderboard and 20 points outside the top three.

“We’re struggling to find our groove a little bit,” Black Foils driver Peter Burling told the Herald.

“We had some really good moments where we sailing really comfortable, but just made too many mistakes around the racetrack both with the handling and the positioning.”

They are now at risk of the event being their worst ever, as they have always had at least one race in which they finished fourth-placed or better in every regatta they have competed in.

While slow starts were again an issue for the Black Foils, the team had some issues on-board later in the day after a nosedive late in the third race.

“It was a real shame that race, we’d sailed a really good race, gone up into third when we had that big nosedive and then completely lost part of the flight control system from that point.”

That left them with no choice but to essentially pull themselves out of the final race of the day, sailing at the back of the fleet and disengaging from the race.

“It’s never fun when that happens, but it’s all part of it. You’ve got to keep the boat in one piece, and it’s a real shame to lose so many points on something like that.”

In a normal regatta, that would leave the Black Foils risking a non-scoring regatta, as only the top 10 teams earn any points towards their season total.

However, Germany were docked 32 event points – as well as 20 from their season total – for three separate incidents during Friday’s practice racing, while Brazil lost eight event points and four season points for their part in one of those incidents.

With the US team not starting after damaging their boat when they capsized on Friday and Germany sailing for practice, the risk of no points is not there for the Kiwis.

Burling was confident the league’s tech team would be able to sort out the issues with their flight control system overnight and have them ready to race again on Sunday afternoon.

“I think it just shows you how tight this fleet is,” Burling said.

“We’re obviously still gelling as a group, and I think we’re improving really quickly, but we probably made a few wrong decisions today, and that really showed.”

It looked like they had taken steps towards figuring things out at the start in the opening race of the day, as they were one of the first teams on to the racecourse proper, though they were posted out wide and ultimately sat mid-fleet after the sprint to the first mark.

A poor third leg saw them slip to eighth, however, which is where they stayed for the rest of the race.

The second race followed a similar pattern. They looked to be in an okay position at the starting line, but couldn’t pull the trigger to get up to speed quickly and found themselves shuffled back in the pack.

Struggling to find passing lanes, the team finished seventh.

It looked like they might have been able to salvage something in race three when a couple of their rivals made mistakes on the penultimate leg, which provided an opportunity for the Black Foils to make up ground – and positions.

Looking to make their way into a potential fourth-place finish, the Kiwis had a close encounter with the Germans, after which they came off the foils and sat parked up for a few moments after the boat bounced in and out of the water.

They could only watch as all the teams behind them passed by, before getting over the line in last place.

The final race capped off a horror day for the Black Foils, who look likely to be sailing for pride on Sunday, likely needing top-two finishes – or better – in every fleet race to have a shot at the podium.

Christopher Reive joined the Herald sports team in 2017, bringing the same versatility to his coverage as he does to his sports viewing habits.