Interview with Peter Burling: "One takeoff... the difference between leading and not"

Peter Burling didn't sugarcoat it. Asked to sum up a weekend that left the Black Foils bottom of Group A, his answer was blunt: a tough weekend as a whole. But there was real substance behind the disappointment, and a clear sense of exactly how tight these conditions have made every race in Valencia.

"You needed two almost perfect races," it was put to him. "In the end, you just got one, and made it impossible."

"Yeah, really tough weekend as a whole," Burling said. "Obviously the kind of tricky nature of yesterday. But yeah, really proud of the way the team kind of went back and reviewed that, came in today with a really good attitude. And yeah, we got one really strong race on the board. Good start. Found ourselves in some tricky spots, but managed to dig out of it. And I think that really gives us a lot of confidence going to Geneva."

The margins

Ask Burling where the weekend actually got away from his team, and the answer isn't a blow-up or a big mistake. It's inches.

"This idea really is in those small details," he said. "One takeoff or one half metre down the first reach. It's the difference between leading and not. So for us it's really about making sure we learn as much as we can from here."

Even Burling wasn't entirely sure why Sunday's second pool race never happened. "I'm not really quite sure why the second race didn't happen. Normally there's like a technical problem or not enough breeze so they had to delay the period. They delayed our first start a little wee bit and we thought they were just going to cram things up in the back end of the TV window. But yeah, pretty surprised to be honest. They didn't manage to get the full schedule in."

A new configuration, and a short turnaround

There was one piece of genuine progress buried in the result. Valencia was the first time the Black Foils have raced the boat four-up in this particular configuration, sailing without the extra crew member and adjusting to a new position on the back jack line. Burling was clear that the step forward there mattered more to him than the scoreline.

"It's been the first time we've really sailed the boat four up in that configuration," he said. "Now we live having to be on the back jack line, and it feels like we've moved forward a long way as a team. So we've just got to keep that trajectory and looking forward to trying to get a win on the board in Geneva."

With less than two weeks between Valencia and the next stop, there's no time to dwell on it, something Burling seemed to genuinely welcome. "It's definitely nice having a short turnaround," he said. "We don't have to sit on this result for too long. We get another chance to go back out there and put our best foot forward."

Geneva, and a pattern that isn't new for the Black Foils

Burling raised the run of conditions ahead unprompted: "I'm sure we're going to see a lot more of these conditions come the next couple of events, into Geneva and then into the Middle East and Dubai. Traditionally all three are reasonably light."

Geneva in particular carries its own history for this team. The Black Foils won Race 1 at Lake Geneva's SailGP debut last September by 17 seconds, foiling around the outside of the fleet in a performance that looked like the start of something. It wasn't. A penalty in Race 2 dropped them into the pack, and by Race 3 they'd fallen as low as 11th.
By the end of day one they sat fifth overall, and the weekend finished with New Zealand missing the final altogether as Germany claimed their maiden SailGP title in three-boat conditions barely above drifting.

A fast start in light air means nothing on its own, in Geneva or anywhere else, and this team knows it better than most. Valencia proved the same thing in reverse: one strong race salvaged from a weekend that could easily have produced nothing at all. Whether the small details Burling talked about can be turned the other way in Switzerland is the question this team now carries into the next fortnight.