United States SailGP Team capsizes on San Francisco Bay ahead of Grand Final
The USA team is one of two to have already clinched a spot in Sunday's winner-takes-all final - the Mubadala United Sail Grand Prix - where they will square off against Australia and a yet-to-be-named third team for the championship title; watch live on Sky Sports Action from 10pm, Sunday
Last Updated: 23/03/22 12:28pm
The United States SailGP Team capsized on San Francisco Bay during a training session for this weekend's SailGP Grand Final.
All athletes were safe and accounted for following the incident, with the team's F50 catamaran sustaining minimal damage.
The American team is one of two to have already clinched a spot in Sunday's $1m, winner-takes-all final - the Mubadala United Sail Grand Prix - where they will square off against Australia and a yet-to-be-named third team for the championship title. Team Japan currently stand the best chance of clinching that third spot.
The cause of the USA team's capsizing was determined to be a systems issue on the F50 that caused the wing sail to not invert properly when team CEO and driver Jimmy Spithill initiated a manoeuvre.
Big wave surfing legend Kai Lenny was also onboard during the event, with surfing champion Jamie O'Brien nearby on the team's chase boat, witnessing the cutting-edge raceboat capsize right in front of Alcatraz.
Lenny said of the experience: "Just as I was getting ready to hop out and run across, the boat started kind of tipping up.
"I was like, 'Oh, that's kind of normal, you know, probably getting a little back winded or something', and then I noticed Jimmy [Spithill] kind of frozen for like a second, and he started to make these other adjustments I hadn't seen him do.
"I was like, 'What's going on? Are we going to like flip?', and sure enough, it went over really fast and kind of got jerked on the bottom. It just didn't seem real in the moment."
Despite the raceboat capsizing in practice, driver Spithill is still excited for the big race on Sunday and the chance for the US team to emerge victorious.
"I think it's going to be awesome," he said. "That was the first day on the racecourse on the main bay and yeah, look, it's a tough, challenging track, but I think we're going to see some really close racing."
He added "In a lot of ways we were actually really, really lucky this happened in training, this malfunction. Clearly if it had been a race day, that would been the race."
Follow the action from the SailGP season final on Sky Sports Action, with the decisive second day broadcast live from 10pm on Sunday.
