After identifying a defect in select wingsails across the F50 fleet, SailGP has made the difficult decision to cancel next month’s SailGP Rio de Janeiro event (May 3-4) in order to facilitate required repairs ahead of New York (June 7-8) and the remainder of the 2025 Season.
The issue was discovered following testing and analysis of the Australia SailGP Team’s wingsail collapse last month in San Francisco. SailGP CEO Russell Coutts has called the decision “a necessary action to take.”
SailGP Rio de Janeiro. The safety of our athletes is our key priority
Coutts said, “After thorough review, our engineers and technicians have discovered an issue with the bonding of the core material in the shear web of some of the wingsails, which could potentially compromise the structural integrity of those wingsails. As such, we’ve made the prudent choice to suspend next month’s event, giving us sufficient time to complete repairs and conduct any further investigations.”
