If you’re a Swiss athlete with the weight of the world on your shoulders as leader of a team that is struggling to perform, there really is only one person to call upon.
It was to the tennis legend with 20 Grand Slam titles to his name that Switzerland’s SailGP driver Sébastien Schneiter turned to, following a series of disappointing results in the premier sailing series, which sees its next race on Schneiter’s home waters of Lake Geneva from 20-21 September.
“He said a lot,” smiled Schneiter when Olympics.com spoke to him at the SailGP in Portsmouth in July, weeks after the meeting with Federer.
“We had a very nice conversation and I had to pinch myself. It went by really quick… definitely very inspirational for us as Swiss athletes and it was really a huge opportunity for me to learn from the best.”
Schneiter, a three-time Olympian in men’s skiff, a two-person 4.99m (16.37ft) long boat, was appointed driver of the F50, a 15m (50ft) catamaran crewed by up to six sailors, for the Swiss boat’s debut in the 2023-24 season.
Pitched as a high-seas version of Formula One motor racing, Sail Grand Prix (SailGP) features 12 nations going head-to-head in high-tech boats that dramatically emerge out of the water on hydrofoils when at optimum speed.
Jostling for position in a series of five roughly 15-minute-long fleet races – generally three on Saturday and two on Sunday dependent on weather conditions – with boats reaching average race speeds of 40-60 km/h (around 25-37mph), the top three ranked teams face-off in a winner-takes-all final on Sunday afternoon.
Points from each boat’s finishing place are tallied at weekends’ end to set the rankings across the nigh-on year-long event, which concludes with a season-ending grand finale.
Add some of the world’s best sailors, from New Zealand’s three-time Olympic medallist and nine-time world champion, Peter Burling, to Olympic gold medallists Tom Slingsby (Australia) and Dylan Fletcher (Great Britain) along with spectator-friendly close-to-land courses in iconic locations across the world, plus a dash of unpredictable weather elements, and you’ve got quite the platform to showcase the very best drama from the world of sailing.
No wonder the likes of sporting icons such as former F1 driver Sebastian Vettel as well as Hollywood actors Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds have become involved in some capacity with the mega series.
Unfortunately for Schneiter that drama revolved around the bottom of the table for his team, as they struggled to make their mark in their initial forays into the series.
