Elbows Out
Phil Robertson coming into the Red Bull Italy SailGP Team is the nuclear option...
It’s silly season in SailGP with the future very much in focus as the transfer window opens and those market-moving forces of fear and greed creep in like a short-seller on Wall Street. And whilst $1 trillion is wiped off the value of cryptocurrencies globally in the blink of an eye, there’s some cagey talks going on around the boatpark and woe betide those eyeing a big buck. Stocks in the form of reputations are whip-sawing wildly.
The days of easy cash in SailGP could be coming to an end, replaced by that ghastly term of ‘value’ with the emphasis in team negotiations on the athlete and what they can offer, rather than the other way around. An outlier is Iain Percy and Nathan Outteridge who have made no secret of their ambitions with the Swedish Artemis outfit, and have that early-stage start-up money swilling around that is mighty attractive to some surprising candidates, but first to pull the trigger on the big moves in hiring Phil Robertson was Jimmy Spithill CEO of the Italian SailGP Team that has done anything but live up to its pre-Season 5 expectations.
