China-backed team gaining global glory in World Match Racing events
A China-backed sailing franchise is making major waves in international competition while providing a timely shot in the arm for the nation’s burgeoning maritime sports ambitions.
Five years after Xu Lijia won China’s first Olympic gold medal in the laser radial class at the London Games, sailing is again a source of national pride thanks to Team ChinaOne Ningbo’s hat-trick of victories on this season’s World Match Racing Tour.
After winning regattas in Australia, Sweden and Russia, the team sits atop the Tour’s leaderboard and is just two meets away from being crowned world champion on home waters.
The Tour moves to its fifth stop in Chicago in late September before concluding with the China Cup in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, in November.
Alex Sun Xiao, who founded the team in early 2016 with a group of sailing-mad investors, attributes its success to a world-class crew skippered by New Zealander Phil Robertson, along with strong governmental support and a robust marketing program.
“As the only China-flagged team in one of the most recognized international races, we are determined to create a team that is competitive at the highest international level to promote sailing in China,” Sun told China Daily.
“Our effort has coincided with the country’s ambition to establish itself as a maritime sports power, so the support from the government has been very strong.”
The World Match competition, sanctioned by the International Sailing Federation, features a format similar to the renowned America’s Cup, where two teams race one-onone on identical 32-foot lightweight catamarans in knockout rounds.
As long as we keep producing good results, more exposure will attract more sponsors so the team can eventually stand on its own feet.”
Alex Sun Xiao, founder of ChinaOne Ningbo
Teams first compete in a fleet race to decide their seedings.
Although widely considered an expensive sport out of the reach of most, Sun said the team is run on a sound financial basis, with lucrative prize money and private investment balancing the cost of training, competition and boat rental.
“As long as we keep producing good results, more exposure will attract more sponsors so the team can eventually stand on its own feet,” said Sun, also founder of Hong Kong-based Capital.
At the moment, ChinaOne competes with an all-foreign crew but has set its eyes on cultivating homegrown sailors to race alongside their experienced overseas counterparts.
A partnership signed in January with the government of Ningbo, a coastal city in eastern China’s Zhejiang province, has offered ChinaOne a home dock to help nurture new talent, Akasha with construction underway on a new 870,000-squaremeter sailing center on Meishan Island.
With 1,000 boat berths, seawalls, racing courses and facilities for water-based leisure activities, the venue will be a candidate for the 2022 Asian Games.
“The ultimate goal is to have a big Chinese team based in Ningbo, developing young talent from there,” said Kiwi helmsman Robertson.
“Hopefully, Ningbo will become one of the top sailing cities in the world and we could set up an America’s Cup or Volvo Ocean Race team from there.”
ChinaOne also hopes its successes will kickstart an upgrade of yacht manufacturing on the east coast.
Meanwhile, the team will join forces with its ambassador Xu, China’s Olympic champion sailor, and local organizers of the China Cup regatta to stage various promotional activities to engage the public.
“China has thousands of miles of coastline along which you will find busy trading ports and fishing fleets, but sailing is still in its infancy,” said Xu, who is recovering from surgery on a shoulder injury that hampered her at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
“Me winning gold at the 2012 Olympics helped to raise the profile of sailing, but we still have a long way to go for it to be further popularized,” said the 30-year-old Shanghai native.
“Hopefully, sailing will break out of its niche status as a high-end sport to involve and inspire more and more people in China.”
It looks like ChinaOne Ningbo will be leading the charge.