The news came after months of speculation. There was doubt over whether Canada - one of the fan-favorite teams of the league - would even make it to next season’s starting line. First, Canada was missed off the 2024/25 Season calendar, then the team’s social accounts went quiet. The news came all at once, with three separate announcements.
First, the team announced its private sale to biotech entrepreneur Dr Greg Bailey - a deal which secures the team’s future and place on next season’s start line. Next, it confirmed a Canada SailGP event will return in 2026. Finally, and most surprisingly, the team revealed that driver Phil Robertson - with the team since its Season 3 launch - has been replaced by double Olympic champion Giles Scott.
This shake-up shocked on two fronts. Robertson, who has been a SailGP driver since its inception, joins a slew of recently departed SailGP veterans, notably Nathan Outteridge, Jimmy Spithill and Ben Ainslie. Outteridge’s team Japan lost its place in the league after it failed to find commercial backing. Spithill was replaced by Taylor Canfield as USA driver last season following the team’s private sale, and left the league to pursue an Italian team. And former Emirates GBR driver Ainslie bowed out mid-way through Season 4, replacing himself with his protégé - Giles Scott.
Even Scott admits he was surprised when incoming Canada CEO Phil Kennard contacted him ‘out of the blue’ as the deal progressed in the background. He was, he says, ‘taken aback’ by the offer due to being ‘very much in with the Emirates GBR team’. Scott drove the British team for seven events last season, taking over from Ainslie in Abu Dhabi and finishing in San Francisco.
During that time, Scott rebounded from a ‘painful apprenticeship’ to prove his worth and leapfrog the progress of other new drivers. With Scott behind the wheel, the British team secured an event win in Halifax and third place finish in New York. Despite his position on the British team, Scott was intrigued by Canada's offer. The key selling points were, he says, ‘the long term commitment’ from the team, the chance to ‘build up something new and fresh’, and the opportunity to be part of the ‘team’s wider strategic and management group’.
“The opportunity to work together to turn Canada SailGP Team into a real commercial success is a huge part of it,” he says, “It was a pretty amazing offer that I just jumped at.” Scott points to the mentality of incoming owner Greg Bailey who ‘sees the team as a start up entity’. “We want to grow, we want to inspire Canadian kids, we want to win races, and we want the team to be a commercial success,” Scott says.
As well as announcing Scott, the team also confirmed the retention of its top talent - flight controller Billy Gooderham, wing trimmer Paul Campbell-James (a fellow Brit) and grinders Tim Hornsby, Jareese Finch, Cooper Dressler and Tom Ramshaw. Strategist Annie Haeger returns to the strategist role alongside Georgia Lewin-LaFrance, who returns from her 2024 Olympic campaign.
When the new season starts, Scott will count these former competitors as his crew mates. He knows some of them already. He competed against Tom Ramshaw in the Finn class while Campbell-James and Scott have sailed together in past America’s Cup campaigns. But everyone else, he says, ‘is pretty new’. “We’ll be sailing together for the first time.”
Stepping into the Canadian F50 to race at Dubai’s season opener will be a different experience from Scott’s debut driving the British team. The crew on that F50 were familiar faces - Scott knew ‘absolutely everyone beforehand’. Nevertheless, the main challenge remains the same. “Getting the group right, the cohesion and the comms correct does take a little bit of time,” he says. “The first hurdle that we as a sailing squad have got to get over is addressing that.”
Looking back, ‘the British team felt we got close to a good level of that’. He’ll look to apply this experience to the Canadian team when the new season gets underway. “We’ll certainly be keen to make shortcuts and come out firing in Dubai.” One advantage of him joining the Canadian team, he adds, is its established crew configuration.
“We’ve seen that experience is pretty key to having success in the league and the Canadian team has an amazing foundation,” he says. There is, therefore, ‘no reason to tear it all apart and build it back up’ - he’s confident in the team line-up. “The team is incredibly good and hopefully I can come in, make a few small changes and ultimately we can step up the leaderboard.”
One of these small changes is the ‘support network’ that comes from being a privately owned entity. “One of the amazing things about having Greg come in and buy the team is it enables us to take the team’s operation to the next level of professionalism,” he says.
The key change here is that the team won’t be ‘turning up to events and thinking about racing a few days out’. Instead, they will ‘live and breathe it’. “A big part of that is having the support and people away from the sailing side who are preparing for the events coming around the calendar - it’s the ability to put SailGP at the absolute forefront and sole focus for all the sailors and the coaching team.”
Something the whole team is looking forward to is its return to Canada to race in front of home fans. Scott, who won in Halifax last season with the British team, will be returning behind the wheel of the home team, an experience that will be ‘seriously cool’.
“I’m biased, because we won, but it was an amazing event - the fan favorite event of the season - and the town absolutely lit up for everything SailGP’. Scott may be British, but he grew up sailing on the Ottawa River and holds a Canadian passport. He points to his ‘fond memories’ of the country as ‘a young kid’ and looks set to embrace SailGP's return to Canada as his own home event.
But before that, the team is gunning to make its mark on the leaderboard. Scott already has Dubai's season opener in his sights. The event, taking place on November 23/24, is ‘coming around very quickly’, he says, and ‘there’s a lot to do’. “It’s going to be full scramble from here to get the team on the same page, we’ve got playbooks to create, comms loops to go through, racing to review - and we’ve got to get to know each other,” he says. “It’s a little bit daunting - but we’ll get through it.”
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