SailGP: Kiwi trailblazer Liv Mackay in pole position to become first female driver

Black Foils strategist Liv Mackay (pictured) "did an amazing job”, says skipper Peter Burling. Photo / SailGP

Suzanne McFadden for LockerRoom

It won’t be long until a woman is behind the wheel in SailGP, as Liv Mackay helps steer the Black Foils to a major triumph on a dolphin-less Lyttelton Harbour. Suzanne McFadden was there.

Following one of the highlights in his glittering sailing career, Peter Burling gave kudos to his right-hand woman, Liv Mackay. Then he admitted he almost wiped her out in one of the most hectic days in SailGP history.

“Liv did an amazing job,” skipper Burling said of his strategist, after the Black Foils stormed to their first SailGP home victory, on a picture-perfect, dolphin-free Lyttelton Harbour on Sunday.

But during the frantic four-race day — in which series leaders Australia were knocked out after colliding with the finish mark before racing began — Burling dashed across the trampoline of the fast-foiling F50, and almost bowled Mackay, who was holding the steering wheel for him.

“I thought I was going to hit her super-fast as we got a big jolt in one manoeuvre, then I just managed to pull up in time,” said Burling, who’s won every SailGP event he’s raced this season.

“Liv makes my life so much easier as she gets more and more comfortable in the role.”

Sending Mackay sprawling overboard would have been a costly error on Burling’s part. The sole female on board, Mackay has made the strategist job her own since first sailing on the New Zealand boat in 2021. On the verge of tears, she spoke of the “surreal feeling” of winning in front of a 20,000-strong home crowd.

“This was right up there with the most intense racing we’ve ever had in SailGP,” Mackay said. “It was glamour conditions, and I’ve never sung the national anthem in front of a home crowd before.”

Though the Black Foils cut it fine to seal their spot in the top-three final, they were never threatened in the deciding race.

“Not for one second did we think it wasn’t possible. We felt dominant in the final race, like we owned the racecourse,” Mackay said. “It was a really great day for us as a team.”

But days like these also reaffirm to Mackay that she could take, and hold, the wheel of a SailGP catamaran.

Liv Mackay at the wheel alongside Blair Tuke during a practice session for the Emirates SailGP event in Dubai in December. Photo / SailGP

“It’s not unrealistic. Today shows you how valuable time in the boat really is; boat handling is massive. I feel really capable with the right training time behind me,” she said. “But right now I’m really happy to be in the team I’m in and where we’re at. We’re always pushing.”

It won’t be long before a woman is at the helm of a rocketing SailGP cat, which can reach speeds of 99km/h. Race founder Sir Russell Coutts predicts that moment will come next season, and he reckons it will be the turning point for women’s sailing around the globe.

Over the past three years, SailGP has had one female sailor on board every nation’s F50 cat as part of their women’s pathway programme. Groundbreaking when it was introduced three years ago, the yachtswomen have since proved their worth in the crews, in roles as strategist, flight controller and, in light winds, grinder.

But the programme hasn’t progressed much further in those years. The female sailors have had a couple of opportunities to sail together as a crew, on practice days in Doha and Abu Dhabi — relying on the generosity of the Swiss team who lent their boat.

It hasn’t been enough to broach that gap in experience to their male counterparts, and sailors like Mackay have asked for more time and resources so women can become more proficient in wrangling the high-tech, highly volatile craft.

Coutts says the next breakthrough is likely to come in a new team next season, and it will be revolutionary for global women’s sailing.

“What will really change things is we’re highly likely to have a top female athlete driving one of the F50s in season five,” he said in Christchurch (which is unlikely to stage the SailGP again after a debacle with the dolphins).

“There’s going to be a new team coming in. I’ve probably said too much. But I think that team have the skills to eventually win. Now that’s going to make the difference.

“That won’t be an all-female crew and it doesn’t need to be. If we can have a female driver go out and win races and maybe even win the league, you can imagine the change that will bring to all those young female kids out there. Sixty per cent of the kids in our junior programme at Manly Sailing Club last year were girls. That will do more for change than anything else.”

Of course, Mackay would dearly love the chance to helm an F50 — in her present role, she takes the wheel whenever Burling runs across the boat, and she’s been helming an EFT26 foiling cat in Europe for Burling’s Live Ocean syndicate.

“Obviously, the exposure for women would be massive. Naturally, being the leader of the team would elevate the respect. But I don’t think it’s our end goal,” says Mackay. “It’s the stepping stone in giving women the chance to do what they want to do.”

Another area where SailGP is breaking ground for women is encouraging them back on board as mums. Four of the 10 women who sailed in the event in Christchurch over the weekend are mothers.

Hannah Mills, strategist on GBR SailGP, was the “pioneer”: the first female athlete in the event to become pregnant, back in 2021. But she wasn’t sure how she would be treated.

“I was really nervous about telling the team and SailGP. But I feel really lucky because I was embraced. It’s been amazing,” says the mum of 17-month-old Sienna.

“They kept me involved through my pregnancy, with onshore roles and sustainability projects. Once I’d had Sienna, they helped facilitate my comeback. I was breastfeeding to start with, so she came to every event around the world with me. Now I’m able to pass some of what I learned on to the other new mothers.”

Australian strategist Nina Curtis — the first woman to win a SailGP event, aboard the Flying Roo — returned only three months after having her first child, daughter Dylan.

Manon Audinet jumped back on to the grinding handles of the French SailGP boat this season after having her son, Louis, with Kiwi sailor Jason Saunders. Both parents were on board the French boat over the weekend, while their New Zealand-based family watched their 7-month-old son.

Liv Mackay of the New Zealand SailGP Team in action during a practice session in Chicago in 2022. Photo / SailGP

Both Audinet and Saunders, a two-time New Zealand Olympian, will sail for France at the America’s Cup in Barcelona this year; Audinet as driver in the inaugural women’s America’s Cup. They finished second to the Black Foils in yesterday’s top-three final, well clear of the Canadian team helmed by Kiwi Phil Robertson.

“Having so many mums in our fleet is wild,” Mackay says. “It shows the longevity of our sport. And I see these women coming back more focused and determined. It’s really inspiring.”

Coutts sees SailGP as an event where both genders can participate equally: “There’s absolutely no reason why the strategist, the driver, the wing trimmer or foil controller can’t be female. There’s load on the steering wheel, but not so much that it’s going to prohibit a good female sailor being able to do it.”

There will be more opportunities for the sailors on the women’s pathway to sail together on the odd practice day that precedes the SailGP events, but it’s an expensive exercise, Coutts explains.

He wants to expand the league — 13 events in season four — to 20 stops around the world by season six; and set up a specialised training facility somewhere in the world where the wind is constant. “It will be way more effective economically,” Coutts says.

There’s been a rush of babies among the male skippers of SailGP camps in the past few months — to Black Foils skipper Peter Burling, Kiwi Canadian helmsman Phil Robertson and Danish skipper Nicolai Sehested.

Now the proud dad of a little girl, Burling says he has more of an understanding of what it’s like for a mum athlete to return to high-performance sailing.

“It’s really cool to see our women’s pathway programme allowing it to happen as well,” Burling says. “[Women] go through a lot more physical change than we do during this time, and we’re all trying to play a supporting role.”

Nathan Outteridge jokes he’d been nicknamed “The Baby Whisperer”, after he stepped in for Burling in Sydney last month, and took the wheel for Sehested in Abu Dhabi in January when his second child was born.

Outteridge, now sharing the helm of Emirates Team New Zealand with Burling in this year’s America’s Cup, has taken on the role of skipper of the Swiss SailGP team and had his two sons with him in Christchurch over the weekend. Outteridge’s wife, Emma, grew up as “a Cup kid”; her dad, Ross Blackman, was involved in running Kiwi America’s Cup campaigns for over three decades.

“It’s easy for people to forget we have a life outside of sport,” Outteridge says. “For the first year of SailGP we travelled with Jack — he was only 5 weeks old when he went to the Sydney SailGP. It’s what Pete and Lucy are going to do now.

“As dads, we’re pretty fortunate. We just get sleep deprived; we don’t have to deal with our body going through major changes like mums do.”

He may have had sleep this weekend, but Burling spent the first 24 hours with a headache. First, disappointed when day one of racing was canned when a rare Hector’s dolphin wouldn’t leave the racecourse on Saturday. Then discovering, as they headed out to the racecourse on Sunday, there was damage to the trailing edge of one of their foils; the Black Foils then spending much of their race build-up cleaning it up.

But it transformed into one of the best days in Burling’s sailing career, he said, and the best day in the Black Foils’ SailGP history. The Kiwis won the first race, sneaked into the final in the third, then dominated from the start line in the final — turning around their upset loss to Canada last season.

New Zealand now top the leaderboard, leapfrogging the Aussies, who ploughed straight into the finish-line marker at the start of the day — avoiding a collision and certain injury to rival sailors — and were penalised eight points for their pain.

This story was originally published at Newsroom.co.nz and is republished with permission.