Black Foils flight controller Leo Takahashi looks ahead as SailGP prepares to hold its first event in Auckland in January. Video / Michael Craig
SailGP’s introduction of athlete movement between seasons might have gone better than expected.
With nationality restrictions being loosened and more teams on the course, several big names in the league were among those on the move, including Kiwi flight controller Andy Maloney (New Zealand to Brazil), three-time SailGP champion Kyle Langford (Australia to Italy), and Kiwi SailGP champion Stewart Dodson (Spain to Switzerland).
Speaking to the Herald about the busy off-season ahead of their event in Auckland over January 18-19, SailGP chief executive Sir Russell Coutts said it was a sign of things to come.
“It’s the first major step to truly professionalising the sport, so I think we’ll see more and more of that in the future,” Coutts said.
“As a league, I know that we’re now putting some real thought into creating a player draft-type system, which we obviously would have to float with the owners and find a mechanism to get the right system in place.
“Essentially what you want as a league is ... great racing, you want close racing, competitive racing, and, in the ideal world, you don’t want any team failing, long-term, to be competitive.”
SailGP chief executive Sir Russell Coutts says the league is exploring the potential of bringing in a draft system. Photo / Adam Warner, SailGP
Coutts noted the success of American leagues in this area, with lower-ranked teams getting the higher picks in the draft to try to boost their talent to be a more competitive team in the future.
While Coutts said it was only an area of thought at the moment, he suggested one route could be to have some athletes protected by teams and others available to be drafted.
That is a similar format to expansion drafts seen in other competitions, and the Rule 5 MLB draft which allowed opposing teams to sign players from an opposition system who are not currently signed to the team’s 40-man MLB roster and have been with the organisation for a significant period.
Coutts believed such a system would be another step towards professionalising the sport, after the league was able to bump up prize money to US$12.8 million across the season ahead of the opening regatta in Dubai in November.
“When you look at the original vision that Larry and I had, it was to create a truly professional sport for the top end of the sport like other sports have; that sailors, the top talented athletes within sailing, can aspire to have real career paths in it,” Coutts said.
“If you’ve got the talent, and as we create these processes for draft systems and athlete evaluation and so forth, as most other professional sports have, then the top talented sailing athletes in the world will be able to have a reliable pathway to then go and, if they’re good enough, be selected for teams and so forth.
“So, that’s moving along nicely. Some of the athletes now are earning really good money, which is the whole point of it.
“We want this to be a viable career path, and the ones that are good enough should be rewarded handsomely for it. So far, so good – it’s going in the right direction.”
Christopher Reive joined the Herald sports team in 2017, bringing the same versatility to his coverage as he does to his sports viewing habits.
