The way things started in the SailGP grand final, the New Zealand crew really should not have been in with a look at winning the US$1m prize.
Spending most of the three-boat shootout to decide the season title at the back of the pack, the Kiwis looked to be headedfor a poor finish to an otherwise great season. But after a weekend in which they struggled for pace on the waters of San Francisco, they almost forced the ultimate error from front-runners Australia.
Midway through the race — contested between the two and Great Britain — the Kiwis began to gain, moving into second place before pushing the Australians down the final leg. It became a match-racing battle as the Australians looked to trade manoeuvres with the Kiwis, which saw the Australians make an error in their penultimate turn of the race and fall off their foils.
Peter Burling’s Kiwi crew were on line to round the final marker and head to the finish line, moving at pace as the Australians frantically tried to get going again. But fine margins worked against the Kiwis.
Tom Slingsby’s Australian crew were able to do just enough to get the right of way around the mark, setting them up to fly over the finish line for their third-straight SailGP title, with the Kiwis settling for second ahead of Great Britain.
The New Zealand SailGP Team finished second in the season three grand final. Australia won their third-straight title. Photo: Bob Martin/SailGP.
Having had that little bit of hope late in the race after an otherwise poor weekend of sailing, it was a tough way for the New Zealand season to come to an end. Australia, the only team to have ever won a SailGP season title, were the front-runners throughout the season in the standings as they consistently finished high in the events.
After struggling in the starting gate throughout the weekend’s fleet races, the Kiwis got over the line in a much better position with only three others in the race — an aggressive move from Slingsby hooking over the top of Great Britain forcing Sir Ben Ainslie’s crew onto the back foot immediately.
The Kiwis had a good line to the first marker, but weren’t able to get far enough ahead of Australia and were forced wide onto the course before they could make their first move. It not only saw Australia streak into the early lead, but allowed Ainslie to sneak into second.
In a venue Burling described as “anything but consistent” it became a matter of reading the conditions for the New Zealanders to get back into the race. They split the course at the top marker trying to gain on the other two boats, and had success.
On the fourth leg, they picked the conditions perfectly and shot into second before ultimately falling just short of capitalising on an Australian error and what Slingsby said would have been “the biggest choke of all time”.
“There were lots of opportunities through the course so it always felt like we were fighting for everything and knew the current had changed so there were a lot o hard manoeuvres, especially upwind, and that presented a lot of opportunities for us,” Mackay said.
“We were really proud of how we fought back through and gave ourselves the opportunity to be there, but it wasn’t quite enough unfortunately.”
While it wasn’t the ideal finish to the season for the New Zealanders, their second campaign in the competition showed plenty of improvements and gave an indication of the benefits that come with time on the water.
The team finished fifth overall last year in a heavily disrupted season, failing to win an event and having limited race wins.
This season, no team won more races than New Zealand’s 16 — Australia finished the season with 15 after four race wins in San Francisco — and they came away with three event titles.
