“Either you fly or you sink”: the keys to the Spanish SailGP on the eve of the Dubai competition | Sports

High performance in sports is, as in the stock market, the art of making a decision in a tenth of a second and executing it in a hundredth. In individual sports, athletes only need analysis skills, ready muscles and a good neuromuscular connection. When playing as a team, sometimes it is enough to execute joint plays repeated a thousand times in tedious training sessions. In a SailGP F50, 17-meter catamarans with a 27-meter wing that fly at 90 per hour, and not on plaid that bounces smooth or on grass groomed with manicure scissors, but in rough or calm waters, thin legs like spider, the foils, with wind from one side and the other, and nine boats around, the five or six crew members must synchronize their movements with the conditions of the sea, the wind, the waves, the tides, and with the actions of their companions , like pieces of a millionaire’s watch. They always need something more, as if they were six cracks, six Fortunes, of League of Legends pressing hundreds of keys per second in front of the video game screen, and not out of tune, and at the same time spinning a pinwheel, jumping from side to side of the catamaran on nets, and the water hitting the face.

And this not only to win, but also to not capsize. He who hesitates goes swimming. The art of deciding the right movement at the right moment is vital to piloting an F50 catamaran in SailGP. Attack. Attack. Attack.

Florian Trittel.Adam Warner for SailGP (Adam Warner for SailGP)

“There is no room for doubt. You either fly or you sink,” summarizes Florian Trittel, wing trimmer of the Spanish F50, which this weekend, in Dubai at COP28, will compete in the sixth race of the season. “We spend the day at sea or analyzing what we do at sea.”

It is SailGP, something like the Formula 1 of the sea. 10 countries, 10 boats, some of the best sailors in history and 13 races. Among them, a Spanish boat, with a pilot, Diego Botín, and a second on board, Trittel, who have not turned 30 years old and are already fighting keel to keel with the best, with the sacred cows. The crew is completed by strategist and grinder (back to the grinder) Nicole van der Velden, tactician and grinder Joan Cardona and flight controller Joel Rodríguez. On the eve of the season finale, the unbeatable Australia leads with 43 points – the Flying Roos, flying kangaroos, have won in the three seasons played – of the legendary Tom Slingsby. The Gallos of the Spanish F50 are fourth, tied at 32 for third, the United States, whose owner and driver until 10 days ago, the god of the America’s Cup, Jimmy Spithill, has just sold to a consortium of celebrities and technologists who have chosen Taylor Canfield as driver. Curiously, in Dubai, Spithill will pilot the Australian F50 to replace his friend Slingsby, who will stay in Australia because his wife is already expecting his first child.

After each event, and sometimes more, the Spanish crew holds videoconferences, each one is in a part of the world, what they call “psychological work” meetings. “We have a performance coach, the New Zealander Hamish Willcox, who also works in the Copa América and has a lot of experience from Olympic campaigns with Blair Tuke and Peter Burling, and he tells us that what we have in our team is something very special, it is something unique, That doesn’t exist like that in other teams and that is probably our point in favor and our strongest point. Willcox, who is not a psychologist, is capable of connecting with each situation and with each personality and he really has a very important role in that sense,” explains Trittel after the competition held in Cádiz, at the end of October. “He is the one who guides the team and, well, we always analyze and think about what is relevant, at what moment. And with him, and with our other coach, the Italian Simone Salvà, we have calls to specifically comment on situations such as those in the last race held, when we made a mistake in putting the keel on Canada, for which we were penalized. We have to find a margin to be right when deciding when to do it and when not to do it.”

It all starts, explains Trittel, from each of the five crew members knowing what they feel comfortable with on an individual level. “Speaking of Diego, of Joan, of me, the question that arises there is: ‘who has all that information in their head during the race?’ We distribute it, and why? Because in this case, what information do we think Diego owes and what information do Diego and Joan want to have?”

They are not alone. From the coast, Willcox, like the coaches of the other nine boats, manages thousands of navigation and telemetry data on his computer, and has a perfect view of the race course, to transmit at all times by radio the information necessary to take decisions. It is a novelty, dictated both by the improvement of his vision and by the desire to reduce the carbon footprint, since the coaches previously directed from Zodiac boats. “Luckily, the coach can help more and more, giving us communications from the ground and is in a much calmer position,” says Trittel. “We are talking a lot about how to find a better balance to know when to attack in situations that are always going to happen. We have a lot of room for improvement on a technical level in terms of maneuvering the boat better to have more confidence to push in certain boat-to-boat situations.”

Florian Trittel and Diego Botín, during a competition.Ricardo Pinto for SailGP (Ricardo Pinto for SailGP)

In the months between SailGP events, 13 weekends a year, sailors are not allowed to train on the F50s. The roosters do it in moths, small individual boats, with foils, too. “It has nothing to do with how to sail with six, but it is what is most similar in terms of concepts, because it flies and we speak the same language and we train against each other,” explains Trittel, who, in addition, also competes with Diego Botín in 49er, a category in which they are European champions and in which they will compete in the Paris 24 Olympic Games, in the port of Marseille. The 49er is only five meters long, does not fly on foils, but is capable of gliding without being affected by the resistance of the water, unless it slows down. Then the sails go from driving power to tipping power. In all maneuvers of a 49er, speed is a friend. And communication is key. Not just on the radio. “Diego and I already connect at a level of energy that is worth more than verbal communication,” says Trittel. “And in the F50, we program communications for each racing situation. We think a lot about what to say and when. We need a clear channel. “Things have to go in an established order so that there are not two people talking at the same time.”

Thus armed, cohesive, they will seek to repeat the victory obtained in Los Angeles over the weekend. “Luckily we already know Dubai and we know that we will probably have light to medium winds with very little waves. Last year we also won a race there,” says Trittel. “When we watched the grand final in San Francisco last year from the side of the field, because we had not qualified, we were completely behind in the standings, we saw the three finalist teams and we dreamed of one day being there. Maybe this season won’t be either, but maybe that dream is not that far away.”

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2023-12-09 04:15:00
#fly #sink #keys #Spanish #SailGP #eve #Dubai #competition #Sports