SailGP: Australia wins Bermuda event, extends championship lead to 10 points over Britain

The BONDS Flying Roos claimed their second straight SailGP victory Sunday in Bermuda. Katelyn Mulcahy for SailGP Share articleSupported ByEditor’s note: This story is part of The Athletic’s coverage of SailGP, an international sailing competition that has been likened to Formula 1 on water. Follow SailGP here. The Bonds Flying Roos claimed victory in Bermuda on Sunday, putting the Australians even further ahead in the overall standings of the SailGP Championship. The Aussies battled it out all weekend with the Spanish team at the Apex Group Bermuda Sail Grand Prix, but when it came to the three-way final race between those two teams and the Germans, Diego Botin conceded that Tom Slingsby and Australia had the better starting strategy. “We thought the Australians and the Germans were coming in a bit too low,” Botin told The Athletic. “We tried to be high and come in with quite a bit of speed, but as we started, there was quite a lot of wind, and the Aussies executed the perfect start. We were too high, and they had the inside line, which was a very good move for them.” Botin and the Spanish started taking risks, breaking out to the far side of the course in a bid to get a winning split on the Australians, but to no avail. In the end, Erik Heil and the Germans closed to within a boat length at the final turning mark, and Botin was forced to execute a high-pressure tack to stay ahead and claim second. The Australians won their second straight SailGP event, although the Bermuda success was not quite as dominant as their stunning four-wins-in-a-day Sunday in Rio de Janeiro last month. The British, who led early on this season, could only manage fifth in Bermuda. As a result, Australia now has a 10-point advantage in the overall standings after five events, with Britain in second and Spain just a point behind in third. Glenn Ashby is a tough nut, but even the 48-year-old Australian says he won’t be taking another look at the onboard video of him breaking his ankle as he crossed the French F50 on Saturday. “I fell over, simple as that,” he told The Athletic with a self-mocking laugh, his right leg in plaster up to his knee. The irony is that Ashby was the stand-in for France’s usual wing trimmer, the British sailor Leigh McMillan, who is still recovering from an injury at the Auckland SailGP event in February. “We were just coming into the pre-start, and it wasn’t really a rushed maneuver at all. But I went out (of the cockpit) quite early and I started crossing the boat, and we just did like a tiny little turn up. At this point, the speed was up to about 90 kmh, and with the centrifugal force, when there’s even a five-degree change of angle, it massively changes the inertia of your body. I was accelerating when I didn’t want to, and even though I started trying to slow down my run, I ended up sliding into the jack line and my foot stayed still and my body sort of folded over my foot. “It almost feels like two shotgun cartridges going off in your leg as it breaks. Bang! Bang! But it’s all part of the sport. I’ve broken plenty of bones over my career, but no regrets. I wouldn’t change a thing.” Ashby was pulled off the boat, was in surgery by 8.30 p.m., and back in his hotel bed by midnight. He wasn’t the only one, either. Australian flight controller Jason Waterhouse turned his ankle and was hobbling around on land, but he still managed to help the Aussies to their dominant win. Starting from the windward end of the start line can propel a vessel to a big lead by mark one, but it can also go badly wrong. It’s a high-risk move that the Spanish team, Los Gallos, executed to perfection in the opening fleet race on Sunday. It launched the Spanish into an early lead that they held to the finish. In the next race, however, the same approach was blocked by the Italians, and Botin was forced to bail out of the start altogether. “We had to do a 360 turn, come back and cross the line behind the fleet, so it was terrible. But sometimes it is easier to come through from behind and make gains through the fleet. When you’re in the middle of the pack, it’s sometimes hard to get out of the traffic.” For the time being, the Americans are seen as the masters of the more conservative early line-up, where the French are seen as the “Johnny come lately” team that looks for the opportunist gap and aims to charge through at full pace from the back of the pack. Ryan Reynolds has a perfect record in SailGP. As co-owner of the Australian team along with fellow Hollywood star Hugh Jackman and Slingsby, Reynolds went practice racing on Friday and actually won the race. Seems like “Deadpool” was a lucky charm for the team. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms