The benefits pro sailors gain from mixing kiteboarding and dinghy foiling with full-on SailGP and America’s Cup campaigns
Two more diverse winners of the Rolex World Sailor of the Year Awards it would be hard to imagine. Tom Slingsby won the men’s category after guiding his AustraliaSailGP to a third consecutive title, ensuring he is still the only skipper to have won the SailGP trophy. He is also skipper of American Magic, who put in a good showing at the first warm-up event in September in the AC40s before the main show in AC75s at next autumn’s America’s Cup in Barcelona.
Much less well known is the female winner, South African Kirsten Neuschäfer who became the first woman to participate – and finish first – in the solo Golden Globe Race, a journey around the world that forbids the use of any technology that post-dates 1968 (the year that Robin Knox-Johnston sailed the 32ft ketch Suhailito victory in the first non-stop solo circumnavigation in the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race). Neuschäfer’s award was all the more deserved for the fact that the 42-year-old also came to the rescue of a fellow sailor during the course of the event.
It’s great to see the Rolex World Sailor of the Year Awards acknowledging achievements from outside of the Olympic bubble. Much as I would have loved to see Max Maeder’s nomination boosted to the overall win ahead of Slingsby, next year is Olympic year and an opportunity for the teenager from Singapore and the other Olympians to earn nominations for next year’s Awards.
Maeder was nominated partly because he’s from Asia, which is under-represented in sailing, and because he was only 16 when he won the Formula Kite World Championship last summer. This makes Maeder the youngest ever winner of an Olympic class world championship.
A few years ago it would have been quite controversial for kiteboarding to have even earned a nomination for World Sailor of the Year, let alone two, because the Women’s Formula Kite World Champion, French rider Lauriane Nolot, also made it on to the short list. For some sailors, considering kiteboarding as a form of sailing is probably still controversial and somewhat unpalatable.
But as I write, heading up the field of 40 IMOCAs in the Transat Jaques Vabre are the duo of Thomas Ruyant and Morgan Lagravière. What Lagravière earns from his life as an offshore professional he spends on his kiteing addiction and the 36-year-old is a regular participant on the kitefoiling circuit alongside the teenagers like Maeder and the 20-somethings like N
