Great Britain continues to be a happy hunting ground for the Black Foils.
In 2022, the New Zealand SailGP team claimed their first-ever regatta win in the global foiling league’s stop in England during season three.
SailGP returned to Great Britain this week, in Portsmouth rather than Plymouth this time, after the event fell off the season-four calendar and, again, the Black Foils had success.
The Kiwi crew finished the opening day of racing sitting fourth on the leaderboard after a quality day of racing on the Solent, despite a poor finish, as the fleet sailed in their five-crew configuration in light conditions.
With results of second, fourth, first and 11th, they finished the day sitting outside the top three only on the result of the most recent race, with both the Black Foils and Australia on 26 points after four races.
Great Britain led the day with 36 points, ahead of Switzerland in second on 30 points.
“We’re really happy with how the boat’s going. It feels like everyone’s doing a really good job,” Black Foils driver Peter Burling said after their win in race three.
“We’re obviously missing [grinder] Marcus [Hansen] on board with this five-up config, but it seems that if you get your nose clear, you can stretch your legs a bit and make a good gain.”
There was drama on the water before racing even got under way, with the French team forced to miss the opening day of the regatta due to a broken wingsail suffered during warm-ups.
It will be a frustrating turn of events for both the team and the league, who will now investigate the cause of the damage. SailGP worked to address issues with the fleet’s wings earlier in the season after Australia had theirs collapse in San Francisco. That saw the scheduled event in Rio de Janeiro in May cancelled as the league opted to take the time to strengthen one of the key components of the wings across the fleet.
“It’s scary what happened to France,” Burling said after the day’s racing.
“We really need to stop these things happening, so hopefully there’s a reason for that and a way of moving forward.”
The issue for France looked like a different sort to that of Australia earlier this season, however, with the top of the sail tearing rather than the entire thing collapsing.
“All athletes on board are safe and accounted for. We are investigating the issue and will share more information as it becomes available,” SailGP said in a statement.
On a day when passing lanes were hard to come by and teams had a few obstacles to avoid on the water, starting races at the right end of the fleet was all the more critical.
While they have had their issues there at times this season, the Black Foils were strong starters in all but the last race of the day and were able to capitalise.
It was their pace off the line that set them up for race one after they were the widest of the teams on the course heading to the first gate. They were able to get around that in third place and challenged Denmark for second throughout the contest.
It took until the penultimate leg before they were able to get around the Danish, but they did so and made the move stick to finish behind Great Britain for second.
They made another strong start in race two, taking off with a bit of traffic around them but coming out of the pack in third after the second leg. They fell to fourth midway in the race as Great Britain found a way through the fleet, but the Kiwis sailed a clean race to hold on to their position from there.
The best of the starters in race three, the Black Foils claimed an easy win – crossing the finishing line before any other team had made the turn into the final-leg sprint to the finish.
They went from the top to the bottom in the final race, however, coming off their foils early in the race and falling to the back of the fleet. On a tough day for making up ground, they weren’t able to bounce back and finished a good day on a bad note.
They are, however, well set up to contest the podium race, with three more fleet races expected to be run on day two before the three-boat event final.
Christopher Reive joined the Herald sports team in 2017, bringing the same versatility to his coverage as he does to his sports viewing habits.