SailGP Canceled for 2020
SailGP has suspended racing for the remainder of 2020. The league will reschedule Season 2 events for 2021.
Two of the four impacted events already have new dates for 2021: San Francisco on April 17-18 and New York on June 4-5. SailGP also intends to return to the UK and Denmark during the rescheduled Season 2, replacing racing previously planned for August 14-15 and September 11-12 of this year.
They plan to expand Season 2’s five events to a minimum of seven during a yearlong period beginning in April 2021, spanning into the early months of 2022.
“The global nature of our league is one of our strongest characteristics,” commented SailGP CEO Sir Russell Coutts. “We bring together top talent from all over the world to organize and compete in a new form of professional racing. As we face this health emergency, our geographic diversity unfortunately becomes a potential liability to ourselves and those around us.
“We’ll use the coming months to focus on important initiatives to make both our racing and broadcast even more attractive — including through further development of our F50 catamarans, simulator and gaming platform, as well as enhanced data integration via artificial intelligence — while continuing to work toward our ambitious target of carbon neutrality by 2025.”
Results from 2020 Sydney SailGP — the first and only completed event of the year — will be null and void. Sir Ben Ainslie must be particularly disappointed. The league got in the one event before the WHO declared a pandemic. The four-time Olympic gold medalist Ainslie led the British entry to victory in his SailGP debut. They beat out the local favorite and defending season champion Tom Slingsby and his Aussie crew.