SailGP cancels event scheduled for New York due to COVID-19 pandemic

NEW YORK (Log News Service)—SailGP has announced that due to the devastating world-wide COVID-19 pandemic it has suspended events scheduled in the 2020 season through the end of June.

Events cancelled so far include the one scheduled in San Francisco on May 2-3 and the event in New York scheduled on June 12-13.

Only one of the events of the 2020 season – the first match in Sydney in February, which was won by Ben Ainslie’s British team – has taken place so far this season.

The next race in the 2020 series is scheduled in Cowes on the Isle of Wight in England on Aug. 14-15 followed by an event in Copenhagen on Sept. 10-11.

The second season of the event includes teams from Great Britain, Australia, Japan, Spain, United States,Denmark and France.

SailGP was founded by Larry Ellison founder of Oracle and champion yachtsman

Russell Coutts as an annual global sailing event. Their aim was to establish a commercially viable global race series with a large audience.

They said that this had been unsuccessfully attempted in the past with series

such as the Extreme Sailing Series. The SailGP format uses the F50 fast foiling catamaran in a variety of spectacular international locations. Teams are currently owned by the competition with the intention of eventually becoming privately owned.

The inaugural competition was in 2019 with six teams – including teams from

Australia, China, France, Great Britain, Japan and the United States – competing.

The winning team of each race during the series scores 10 points, with second place earning 9 points etc. The final race of the season is a match race between the two highest scoring teams over the season with a US $1 million prize to the winner.