I’ll start by stating the obvious: I’m not a sailor. My sailing experience maxed out with a few school holiday lessons wherein I spent the time aboard a tiny plastic laser playing fruit salad: a game involving swapping places with other, equally disinterested sailors when the name of a certain fruit is called out by the group leader who should, presumably, have been teaching us how to sail. Despite my lack of knowledge of the sport, before the first start gun goes at the Auckland round of SailGP – the world’s fastest sailing race – I’m already jazzed.
I’ve been in the “City of Sails” for less than 24 hours, and the competition’s hold on the people of Auckland is palpable. On a morning walk around the wharves that border the city centre, I watch the luxe decks of superyachts fill with Champagne buckets and excitable sailing fans cracking beers before the clock has cracked 12pm.
Bars along the viaduct are decked out with chalkboards emblazoned with “SailGP – book ahead!” and “Drink like a sailor!”, and down at Wynyard Point – home on Grand Prix weekend to the six-storey, 8,000-person grandstand and a festival-like event set-up – Aucklanders gather in droves. I haven’t felt sports fever like this since the Swans’ almighty performance in the 2024 preliminary finals, and I’m already wrangling my friends (crucially, the one with a boat) for when this competition lands in Sydney next month.
One of the newest major sporting events in the world, the SailGP first launched in 2018, with the Aussie team – captained by Olympian Tom Slingsby – taking home gold for the first three years.
As the “Grand Prix” moniker suggests, this is a competition of speed – with the boats (super technical 50-foot foiling catamarans) reaching speeds of up to 101km/h. That and the short race format – the five-person teams navigate maze-like routes on the open water in races that last for around ten to 12 minutes – make the SailGP considerably more thrilling than the Sydney to Hobart boat race (IMHO).
This year, the competition will take the world’s speediest sailing teams (there are currently 12 teams competing) around the world to 14 coastal locations – with each city’s event comprising between six and seven races, spread across two festival-like days.
Sailing fans can watch from the shore or from chase boats on the harbour – up-close and personal with the super-speedy catamarans careering across the water. It’s high-speed and high-stakes, and it all unfolds in a beautiful, sparkling setting. In a lot of ways, it’s the perfect spectator sport.
Before I get to the crux – how the Aussies are getting on – I’ll address the elephant in the room: the impact something like this has on the planet. In a world beset with climate issues, events of this scale can seem like an excessive, indulgent use of money and resources, but SailGP’s motto is “powered by nature”, and as far as I can tell, it’s not just a green-washing catch-cry.
As the first climate-positive sport and entertainment company in the world, the SailGP is almost entirely clean-energy powered (ten out of the 13 events last season were 100 per cent powered by clean energy), and it uses its platform to inspire. The SailGP “Impact League” rewards the competing team’s positive social and environmental actions across the racing calendar, with the Canadian team currently leading the charge in the social and environmental responsibility department. The impact approach also sees the SailGP team engage with youth programs around the world to share the message of positive social and environmental impact, with their “Inspire” program reaching 22,749 people since 2018.
As an occupational hazard of travelling for work, I’d anticipated that the fun and games of visiting a sunny city for a Champagne-fuelled (the spectators, not the athletes) sporting event would be accompanied by a niggling feeling of guilt, but SailGP’s genuinely impressive environmental impact approach had the opposite effect. After Covid saw the climate anxiety of 2019 wane slightly in face of a bigger threat, it’s so inspiring to see major institutions taking an active stance against the climate crisis, and using their platform and resources to change the world for the better.
In this year’s competition, Australia is competing against New Zealand, Switzerland, France, Italy, Brazil, Britain, Spain, Canada, Germany, Denmark and the United States. After finishing in first place in New Zealand this past weekend, the Aussies are going strong in the 2025 season – and we've got high hopes for how they'll perform on home waters. Mark your calendars and pray for sunshine on February 8 and February 9 – you can learn more about the SailGP Sydney here.
Stay in the loop: sign up for our free Time Out Sydney newsletter for more news, straight to your inbox.