There is nothing new about women successfully competing in sailing, but the high-speed, media-driven game of foiling on SailGP’s 50-foot catamarans has mostly focused on male stars.
That is until now, with Brazil’s first SailGP entry and the team’s driver, Martine Grael.
Flying on hydrofoils is a game of lightning-quick decisions. And courage. And trust. Few humans, and fewer women, could step to the helm with her credibility. Cue Grael, who is set to become the first woman to drive in SailGP, adding to her family’s legacy in the sport.
She has won two Olympic gold medals in the same type of skittish skiff raced by the leading SailGP skippers. That group includes Tom Slingsby and Nathan Outteridge of Australia (one gold each), Giles Scott of Britain (two golds), Peter Burling of New Zealand (one gold) and Diego Botin of Spain (one gold). Grael’s boat, a 49erFX class, is identical to the men’s 49er except that the sail area is reduced to suit lighter sailors.
Now Grael faces the same learning curve that each of them once did.
“To begin, it’s about developing muscle memory,” she said. “There is much more multitasking than I’m used to.”
SailGP’s complex boats place extreme demands on the driver, one of six sailors whose moves have to mesh perfectly. One key to maintaining speed is to keep the boat flying on its foils through all maneuvers.
Grael trained with experienced fill-in sailors in Bermuda this summer. “I was pleased that we were accomplishing foiling tacks on Day 1,” she said. “Day by day I was learning from seeing how different people approach specific problems and how to manage communications. Quantity makes quality.”
Playing catch-up to more experienced teams would be difficult for anyone, especially without a complete lineup, but Brazil’s challenges grew exponentially when its practice boat broke.
“I heard a crack. I saw the wing coming down,” Grael said. “My first thought was that training is done and we needed that time. Then — our people. The good luck is that the wing broke while we were going into a maneuver, dead downwind.”
The broken parts of the wing fell into the center of the boat, with people still at their duty stations on two sides. “A fraction later, and they would have been crossing the boat, where the wing came down,” she said.
Cue the simulators.
Assessing the team now, Alan Adler, who is the team chief executive, a former Olympic sailor and a sports promoter, said: “The training camp in Bermuda was priceless. We only had five days of sailing, but this was important for the start of the team.”
But only a start. With the team incomplete, Adler’s next stop after Bermuda was Barcelona, Spain, to search for talent among the America’s Cup teams racing there. He said later that he had “secured amazing, experienced sailors, but this will be announced right after the Cup.” That event is scheduled to finish this month.
Looking toward the SailGP opener in Dubai in November, Adler said he expected light winds, “and that tends to equalize this fleet.”
He continued: “We will aim high, respecting that we are new to the game.”
Grael counts on being fully up to speed by May. The circuit then lands in Brazil, where the name Grael is inseparable from high-end sailing. Her uncle Lars is an Olympian, and so is her brother, Marco, a grinder on the SailGP team. Her father, Torben, is a five-time Olympic medalist, including two golds.
He skippered two races around the world, finishing third and first. Martine joined him in the first circumnavigation, so she knows about dodging ice in the Southern Ocean as surely as she knows the moves of short-course racing.
But first, no pressure. “Our mother started us sailing in little boats, my brother Marco and me,” Martine Grael said. “I was just having fun, being free on the water in my own little world, learning to make decisions for myself. Marco and I got into racing slowly. It was our choice, so we owned it.”
Eventually, her competitive instincts caught fire. “As a teenager, I got deep into competing, really into it,” she said. “At one point my father sat me down to sort that out. He asked why. He wanted to know, is it about the travel? Meeting new people? Is it about being with your friends?”
I said, “‘Dad, I really like to race.’”
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