Media Conference SailGP Great Britain - Coaches threatened with a 'flaming'
by Richard Gladwell/Sail-World NZ 30 Jul 2022 02:37 NZST
30 July 2022
SailGP Great Britain - Practice session - Plymouth Sound - July 30, 2022 © Felix Diemer/SailGP
The media conference for SailGP Great Britain was conducted ahead of the racing getting underway on Plymouth Sound.
Other than marking the 10th anniversary of Sir Ben Ainslie's fourth Gold Medal win at the 2012 Olympic Regatta at Weymouth, the session was notable for the reaction of the skippers in the second group to questions about whether they had used the option of receiving communication from their coaches during racing, and their views on the use of the outside assistance.
In all other sailing, outside assistance in any form is illegal and would result in disqualification.
"It's fairly new and it's very congested in terms of comms on the racecourse on board the boat," remarked CanadaSailGP's Phil Robertson. "So it's quite hard for a coach to pick his moment to come in and say something and if they get it wrong, they're probably going to get a flaming so they tend to stay a bit quiet at the moment!"
Racing gets underway Saturday, at 2pm local time local time, and concludes on Sunday.