{"id":285153,"date":"2026-02-15T10:10:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T10:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/285153\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T10:10:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T10:10:14","slug":"sailgp-australias-win-in-new-zealand-overshadowed-by-horrific-crash-two-sailors-in-hospital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/285153\/","title":{"rendered":"SailGP: Australia\u2019s win in New Zealand overshadowed by horrific crash, two sailors in hospital"},"content":{"rendered":"

AUCKLAND \u2014 After the opening day of the New Zealand Sail Grand Prix was abandoned because of the catastrophic collision between New Zealand and France<\/a>, racing got underway Sunday with Australia victorious at the\u00a0end of a hard-fought battle with Great Britain and Spain in a close three-boat final.<\/p>\n

The fleet\u00a0overcame a physically and emotionally exhausting weekend that will live long in the memory, for both good and bad.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the second year running that Australia has won in the gusting wind of Auckland Harbour, but even Australia\u2019s driver Tom Slingsby admitted he couldn\u2019t fully enjoy the moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, it sucks that the French team and the New Zealand team weren\u2019t out there,\u201d the Australian skipper told The Athletic. \u201cEspecially New Zealand being the home team here.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to compete against the best teams and we would have loved to have had them out there and try to get the win against them. But it\u2019s out of our control, they had their incident and we had to just focus on ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

In one of the nastiest crashes yet seen in the six years of SailGP competition, with a fleet of 13 F50 catamarans hurtling down the track towards mark one at speeds close to 60 miles per hour (100km\/h), a loss of grip on the New Zealand boat caused it to nosedive and immediately corkscrew 90 degrees to the right, directly into the path of the French boat just a few metres behind.<\/p>\n

In Auckland Hospital, grinder Louis Sinclair underwent surgery for compound fractures to both legs.<\/p>\n

A team statement said: \u201cLouis Sinclair has had successful surgery on his right leg overnight to injuries suffered during yesterday\u2019s (Saturday) collision with France. The medical team involved in Sinclair\u2019s treatment have been fantastic and are pleased with the results of the surgery and are positive about his ongoing recovery.\u201d<\/p>\n

France\u2019s strategist Manon Audinet was under observation in hospital, a team statement said Sunday. The statement said Audinet had been \u201cviolently thrown forward inside her cockpit\u201d at the moment of impact, which resulted in the steering wheel breaking.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was immediately attended to by the SailGP medical team before being transported to Auckland Hospital for further examinations,\u201d the statement read. \u201cThese assessments are intended to rule out any major injury, particularly in the abdominal area, which was the most exposed during the impact. She is currently being kept under observation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n New Zealand and France collided in the third race of the opening day of the New Zealand Grand Prix. (Simon Bruty for SailGP)<\/p>\n

After the boat repair team had moved heaven and earth to fix the New Zealand F50 after that crunching collision with Switzerland at the season-opening Perth Grand Prix last month, to see the boat disintegrate Saturday after the crash with France was heartbreaking.<\/p>\n

With no points from Perth and just 2 points from Auckland, already the Black Foils\u2019 season prospects are bleak. With just two weeks until the next event in Sydney, there\u2019s no chance of New Zealand being back on the water by then.<\/p>\n

Even the following event in Rio de Janeiro in April is looking like a stretch. For the Kiwis to have any prospect of reaching the grand final in Abu Dhabi this November, they are going to have to put together an exceptional campaign across the second half of the season.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n France\u2019s F50 catamaran is worked on in the technical area following a collision with New Zealand. (James Gourley for SailGP)<\/p>\n

Through no fault of their own, other than wrong place, wrong time, the French campaign is not in a good state. Aside from Audinet\u2019s injury, others on the team are struggling with their own lesser injuries.<\/p>\n

Once the SailGP technical team have had a chance to assess the damage from both boats, it\u2019s possible that parts of the New Zealand boat could be used to put some kind of patched-together version of the French and New Zealand team to get an F50 on the water for Quentin Delapierre\u2019s crew to be able to participate in Sydney. But that is a very long shot.<\/p>\n

Split-fleet races but dissatisfaction over points allocation<\/p>\n

After Saturday\u2019s collision, the race committee decided to split the remaining fleet of 11 boats into Groups A and B. This is an option that has long been considered by the league, and the risk of a repeat incident made organizers rethink the format overnight.<\/p>\n

With the rain clouds scudding over the city and the wind gusting to over 30 knots at times, creating more space on the race course seemed like the right option. Some teams broke their all-time top speed records, many in excess of 60 mph.<\/p>\n

When Italy suffered a similar loss of control to New Zealand within the first 20 seconds of the first start of the day, the race committee\u2019s split-fleet decision was immediately vindicated. Brazil was coming up behind and to windward of Italy and there was enough space and time for a collision to be avoided. If Italy had suffered that kind of loss of control in a full fleet of boats in a tight space, we could well have seen a repeat scenario.<\/p>\n

While most sailors acknowledged that the split fleet was the right decision for the right occasion, there was widespread dissatisfaction with the allocation of points.<\/p>\n

Sunday\u2019s races were worth only half the points of Saturday. At the end of Saturday\u2019s two completed fleet races, the French were leading the standings. After being knocked out of action by that collision at the start of the subsequently abandoned Race 3, France \u2014 despite missing all of Sunday\u2019s fleet races \u2014 would still have qualified to take part in the three-boat final alongside Great Britain and Australia.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, even if a lower-ranked team like Germany or Canada had won both their group heats on Sunday, they still wouldn\u2019t have made the final. This needs a big rethink.<\/p>\n

Gremlins in the Spanish machine<\/p>\n

Spain have endured a torrid start to their 2026 season. After a boat breakage put them out of action before the Perth SailGP weekend even began, through no fault of their own, Diego Botin\u2019s crew deserved a bit of good karma to come their way for Auckland. It didn\u2019t happen, not that the ever-chilled Botin is usually one to complain.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had had quite a lot of boat issues yesterday (Saturday),\u201d he told The Athletic. \u201cSome hydraulics weren\u2019t working properly. We managed to fix them just before the races, but still the boat wasn\u2019t working super well.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Spain, Australia and Great Britain compete on the final day in New Zealand. (Jason Ludlow for SailGP)<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd after a very nice warm-up, everything was going super well until we were entering the start box. And then the pin on the rope that pushes the board up came out. So we couldn\u2019t pull the board up and we had to pull out of the race to fix it before the next race.\u201d<\/p>\n

A bit like the French, the Spanish benefited from a strong performance in Saturday\u2019s high-scoring races to carry them through to the final despite the gremlins.<\/p>\n

Next to Sydney<\/p>\n

Sunday provided all the right kind of excitement after the heart-stopping calamity of Saturday. There\u2019s very little time for the fleet and the organizers to draw breath before resetting and reloading for the Sydney Grand Prix in less than two weeks\u2019 time.<\/p>\n

It has been the most dramatic start to any SailGP season. Some of the sailors might actually look forward to some lighter winds for the third event of the season. But Sydney Harbour is quite capable of delivering any kind of breeze, including the rough stuff that we\u2019ve seen in Perth and Auckland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUCKLAND \u2014 After the opening day of the New Zealand Sail Grand Prix was abandoned because of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[102597,111,43,139,69,18245],"class_list":["post-285153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-global-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sailing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}