Angry Coutts bites back at SailGP critics

Sir Russell Coutts has launched an extraordinary attack on unnamed journalists who he claims are trying to “bring down” SailGP in favour of the America’s Cup, in an impassioned defence of the series he co-founded following the three-boat collision in New York last month.

The SailGP CEO released a monologue on social media on Tuesday addressing criticism of the league in the wake of the American round. In the speech, Coutts angrily dismisses suggestions that adopting traditional upwind starts is the best solution to avoid dangerous and damaging collisions, as seen between the Italian, Brazilian and United States F50s on the Hudson River. 

He also has little time for suggestions, as mentioned on The Foil, that adopting rules used in IQFoil racing could be a measure to prevent startline collisions. Instead, Coutts places the blame for the New York accident on crews not maintaining “a good lookout” – and that “steps” will be taken by SailGP to address this in the future.

“There’s plenty of online chatter about the format of SailGP, and I’ve got to say most of it is really uninformed and disappointingly not well thought through,” Coutts begins on a post that runs on SailGP’s official account. “Upwind starts? Seriously? That just wouldn’t work in SailGP. I mean, if you had half a fleet starting on starboard tack and half the fleet starting on port tack, you can imagine boats that might be overlapped on port tack with a late starboard tack coming in, it’d be complete chaos. Having the boats all start on one tack on the reaching leg is definitely optimum.

“Also, if you started going upwind, a group of boats [would] reach the port boundary almost simultaneously, and that would cause chaos as well, eventually. So it's pretty obvious, even with about five seconds of thinking, which clearly some of those people didn’t do, it wouldn’t work.”

Coutts then explains that the format SailGP adopts for racing starts is designed to appeal to the widest possible audience, to create a racing spectacle that can be understood by potential fans who have no prior knowledge of sailing.

“In terms of the sports product, one of the main reasons SailGP is attracting a much wider audience than just the avid sailing fan base is because it’s more understandable, and when we started SailGP, we did some engagement studies with audience using real racing footage. Actually, in this case it was from one of our races in Chicago, and the understanding of the race is one of the key barriers with attracting new fans.”

“So the more understandable you can make it, the better. And that first reach, the start, [who is] first to the first turning mark, it’s an exciting part of the race. You don't need to be a sailing fan to understand that. Whereas, if you start upwind and the boats head off in opposite directions, I can guarantee you to any new sports or racing fan that hasn't actually had any experience with sailing, they'll be confused by that. We see that in other formats.”

It is at this point that Coutts makes his accusation of a conspiracy against SailGP in favour of the America’s Cup – without naming names.

“So, really, what’s all this criticism about? It’s about a couple of journalists, or so-called journalists, trying to bring down SailGP. But why? Because they think that by bringing down SailGP, they’re going to enhance their favourite product called the America's Cup. The way to enhance the America's Cup is to improve it, to fix it, to make it better. 

“The way to enhance the America’s Cup is not to bring SailGP down, and even if they tried, they're not going to be successful anyway. SailGP has grown too big for that now. So, either way, their criticism is going to basically fail… If they want to be considered experts in the sport, they should try and think through things a little bit more deeply than what they have.”

Adopting rules used in windsurfing is a suggested solution that has been proposed by our own Lewis Smith and Tom ‘Mozzy’ Morris on The Foil. But again, Coutts is dismissive.

“The other thing is the suggestion is that we adopt the IQ foil rule,” he says. “An F50, including the foils, is almost 11 metres wide, so if a boat [is] going faster from behind [and] a boat in front came off its foils, it’s going to require a pretty drastic alteration of course. If they're within one boat length, and you look at the maths, you know the boat’s 15 metres long, just under 11 metres wide with the foils, [so] it would require a 40 to 45 degree course change anyway to avoid that boat, depending on exactly the position of the boat behind and whether there was other vulnerable boats interfering, which would likely be the case. So it wouldn’t achieve anything. 

“In fact, the key to this is that the teams maintain a good lookout, that they know that the other boats were there. That was the main reason for the collision in New York, and that’s one of the fundamental rules of basically any seafaring, even the international rules for prevention of collision of at sea. 

“But if you’re racing under the racing rules, you’re obligated to keep a lookout, and that was really the problem, and so we're going to take steps to make sure that the teams will be keeping a lookout in the future.”

Since the post appeared, Coutts has even taken to replying to audience opinions directly. In one reply, he gave some indication on those “steps" to be taken. “We are bringing in new rules such as each team needing a strategist onboard regardless of reduced crew situations, further training on situations for coaches and teams, and options that Race Management can utilise based on course geometry and other factors.”

The defence, delivered in a tone of exasperation, comes just days before the next SailGP round in Halifax, Canada. Keep an eye on The Foil and our channels this week as we gauge reaction from the teams as the repaired boats from Italy, Brazil and the United States return to the fleet.