Global Sports
From the hospital and a crash that threatened their participation to spraying champagne on the podium. Somehow, Quentin Delapierre steered the French team to the unlikeliest of victories at the Germany Sail Grand Prix in Sassnitz on Sunday.
On Friday, during a wild and windy practice session, Delapierre suffered a face-plant into the cockpit of the French F50 catamaran after their carbon-fiber rudder exploded off the back of the boat and high into the air. After being released from hospital with a clean bill of health, Delapierre set sail on a tricky course that threw all kinds of curve balls at the fleet over the weekend.
Where Saturday had been a test of nerve in strong, gusty winds that saw the F50s break new records for high-speed sailing, Sunday was a much more subtle game in lighter, patchy breeze. Even on their largest 24m wingsails, the teams were struggling to thread their way around a treacherous race course that made it very difficult to achieve 100 percent flying time above the water.
Like the French, the British could have been forgiven for suffering from some kind of trauma after the violent collision with the U.S. team which took them out of action on the final day of Saturday’s session. The SailGP repair team pulled an all-nighter to get the British boat back into race-ready form.
