Slingsby returns from paternity leave with a challenge for younger SailGP skippers
SAN DIEGO (AP) — Tom Slingsby returned from paternity leave to find himself as the senior statesman of SailGP, ready to keep pushing Team Australia toward another big payday while also challenging the younger skippers to step it up in the global league.
Slingsby is back at the wheel of Team Australia’s “Flying Roo” foiling catamaran for SailGP’s debut in Abu Dhabi on Saturday and Sunday at the midpoint of Season 4. He skipped the Dubai regatta last month to be with his wife, Helena, for the birth of their first son, Leo.
Since that regatta, star skippers Jimmy Spithill and Ben Ainslie have announced their retirements from racing in the 10-team league.
Spithill skippered the Aussies to second place in Dubai as Slingby’s fill-in and then announced he was finished racing in order to focus on starting an Italian team for Season 5. Two weeks earlier, he left the U.S. team after it was sold to a group of investors. Ainslie, the most-decorated sailor in Olympic history with four gold medals and one silver, announced last week that he was handing the wheel of the British catamaran to two-time Olympic gold medalist Giles Scott so he could focus on the America’s Cup later this year as well as running the SailGP team as CEO.
Ainslie, who turns 47 on Feb. 5, won consecutive regattas earlier this season while Spithill, 44, won one regatta.
Slingsby, 39, has dominated SailGP since it launched in 2019, claiming each of the first three $1 million, winner-take-all season championship races.
He said he considered Ainslie and Spithill his biggest rivals to win the championship each year.
“To be frankly honest, I think some of the younger generation haven’t stepped up to the plate as much as they could have and they’ve got to prove it,” Slingsby said Friday. “Jimmy and Ben are in their mid-40s and still winning SailGP events consistently and the new, young generation, most of them haven’t won an event. Results-wise, they were still the top sailors in the world.”
New Zealand’s Peter Burling, who turned 33 on Jan. 1, has won twice this season. The only other skipper to win a regatta this season is Spain’s Diego Botin, who turned 30 on Christmas Day.
“The young generation need to really show why they’re the next generation of this fleet,” Slingsby added. “Knock yourself out. I’m now the oldest skipper in the the fleet. I guess I’m throwing down the gauntlet a little with that. It’s just my honest opinion that if you are the next generation, you’ve got to prove why you’re the best in the world and you’ve got to knock us older guys off the perch.”
Burling — like Slingsby, Spithill and Ainslie — has a deep resume. He is the two-time reigning America’s Cup champion helmsman with Emirates Team New Zealand and has won three Olympic medals with Cup crewmate Blair Tuke, including a gold and two silvers.
Slingsby and Ainslie were on Spithill’s crew aboard Oracle Team USA that pulled off one of the greatest comebacks in sports to defend the America’s Cup in 2013. It was Spithill’s second straight America’s Cup victory. The year before, Slingsby won a gold medal at the London Olympics, where Ainslie won his fourth straight gold medal.
Slingsby is returning to the America’s Cup this year as helmsman of the New York Yacht Club’s American Magic. Burling will go for a three-peat with Emirates Team New Zealand, Ainslie continues to skipper INEOS Britannia and Spithill returns as co-helmsman of Italy’s Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli Team.
Slingsby and mates have yet to win this season but continue to lead the standings with 52 points, well clear of ROCKWOOL Denmark with 41 and New Zealand 40. Emirates GBR has 38 points and the United States, now skippered by Taylor Canfield, has 35.
The purse for this season’s winner-take-all podium race has been increased to $2 million.
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