Black Foils big losses ahead of new SailGP season

By Christopher Reive

The Black Foils are sailing into the new SailGP season upon the winds of change.

Last season, the Kiwi crew set the standard in the global foiling league – winning five of the 13 events to end the regular season as the top seed, before finishing third in the grand final race against Spain and Australia.

With the new campaign kicking off in Dubai this weekend, the Black Foils return to the F50 foiling catamarans after some key changes in personnel – including the transfer of flight controller Andy Maloney to the newly formed Brazilian team, replaced by Leo Takahashi, while coach Ray Davies is no longer with the team and Josh Junior, who finished season four alongside Davies in an off-water role, is on hiatus. Olympic bronze medallist and America’s Cup winner Sam Meech takes over in the coaching role.

After their feats from a year ago, the Black Foils will go into the new campaign as one of the favourites. However, when asked what a successful campaign looked like for the team in season five, wing trimmer Blair Tuke told the Herald it was too soon to set a concrete bar.

“I think that’s still pretty far away, and I think we go for the same approach we did last season, which is to try to obviously keep stepping forwards every time we’re on the water, but ultimately try to win race weekends, win events.

“We’ve got the added complication slash opportunity with Leo coming in; I think it’s probably more opportunity than complication where you’ve got this new guy, new enthusiasm, we’ve got Sam in the coaching role, [so] we’ll try and use that to our advantage.

“We need to make sure we give it the respect it deserves to gel as a team to make sure we’re all getting the most out of each other, but I’m confident that it’s going to happen pretty early on and then we just try to keep stepping forwards and sailing the boat well in a range of conditions.”

The team will likely get a range of conditions early in the season, with this weekend’s opener in Dubai set to serve up light winds, before the league’s debut in Auckland on January 18-19 and return to Australia in February.

While Maloney’s decision to join the Brazilian team and Takahashi’s appointment as his replacement with the Black Foils has been a talking point heading into the new campaign, Davies not returning to his role has gone under the radar.

Among the coaching staff with both the Black Foils and Emirates Team New Zealand, Davies was a key part in helping the Kiwi SailGP crew become championship contenders after a tricky introduction to the league in season two. Last season, he was named the league’s coach of the season in the fan-voted awards.

Tuke said the coaching changes were planned a way out, with Davies expected to be with the team until the end of season four, helping to integrate things across both SailGP and the America’s Cup, while Junior, also a member of Team New Zealand’s America’s Cup-winning campaign, signalled his intention to take a break towards the back end of last season.

“That’s left the opportunity for Sam to step in. He was a pretty key part of the coaching crew in Barcelona and someone that Pete and I, and the other sailors in the Black Foils, have spent a lot of time with over the years across the Olympics in Rio and Tokyo, and someone we have a huge amount of respect for so we’re pretty excited to have him stepping into the fray and know he’ll do a great job for us,” Tuke said.

Junior returning at some point in season five wasn’t ruled out, but it would be a case of seeing how things unfolded in the coming months.

“It was pretty well thought out before Barcelona, back to the end of season four,” Tuke said of Junior stepping away.

“This was a plan. He wanted to enjoy a Kiwi summer. We’ve all been going pretty hard for a few years now, so he’s enjoying a well-deserved break.

“Hopefully we’ll see him back in the fold, but we’ll see how that plays out over the next couple of months once he has a bit of time to freshen up.”

Black Foils squad for SailGP Dubai
Driver: Peter Burling
Wing trimmer: Blair Tuke
Strategist: Liv Mackay
Flight controller: Leo Takahashi
Grinders: Louis Sinclair and Marcus Hansen
Coach: Sam Meech

This article was first published on nzherald.co.nz and is republished here with permission