Kiwi SailGP star talks about axing
Kiwi sailor Phil Robertson has addressed his exit from the Spanish SailGP team, saying he wasn’t given the opportunity to finish his tenure with the team on a high. Robertson was sensationally dropped from the Spanish team on the eve of the season two final in San Francisco in March. In explaining the team’s decision, chief executive Maria del Mar de Ros said: “The thing is that Phil, he feels he is superior in some sort of way, and that they [the crew] are kids.”
Now sailing with the Canadian team, Robertson has addressed his exit from the Spanish set-up ahead of this weekend’s season opener in Bermuda. Speaking to the Herald, Robertson said he knew it was going to be a short-term relationship with the Spanish team, but he was surprised by the way it unfolded.
“It was a bit of a rude comment, if I’m being frank,” Robertson said. “They basically decided fairly early on in the season that they wanted to focus on the next year, which kind of goes against all my values of being a competitor trying to be competitive and win events and win series.”
Despite having been at the helm for the team in all seven events on the SailGP season two calendar and being a factor in the team sitting fourth on the ladder with the prospect of leaving San Francisco with the $1.44 million prize, Robertson’s services were not wanted.
Even in training in the lead-up to the race, he had little time to prepare.
“They actually wouldn’t let me train,” he explained. “They had their season three team on the boat and wouldn’t let me train. I showed up a couple of days before the event, they gave me an hour of training and I said ‘look, it’s not really good enough for an athlete to be not allowed to train by his own team’.
“I actually gave them an ultimatum. I said ‘you’ve got to give me at least the next two days, all the training time, or I actually don’t think it’s worth me being on the boat’. They slept on it, came back the next morning and said they’d go with the Spanish driver.
“I was actually quite relieved, but a little bit disappointed with the comments that came out from the team afterwards.”
At the season two finale, the Spanish team did not end up qualifying for the $1.44m race. In the fourth fleet race of the event, they crashed with the American boat after trying to undercut them around a gate and sustained season-ending damage. Robertson was a spectator.
“It’s a good team,” he said of the Spanish. “We got it to a very high level. I think for anyone to come on and drive the boat was in a fairly easy position and they obviously had a big crash which I think just goes to show the inexperience when it’s tight and not really knowing what to do. I wasn’t surprised.”
Robertson is looking forward to beginning the new season the Canadian team. Having known his time with the Spanish outfit was probably going to be fleeting, he kept himself abreast of other opportunities and now finds himself as a pivotal part of one of the two new teams in the competition.
Canada and Switzerland will make it a 10-team fleet this season, as they face New Zealand, Australia, Great Britain, USA, Spain, Denmark, Japan and France.
While this will be Robertson’s third team in as many seasons, he intends to be a long-term member of the Canadian team as they look to build themselves into a contenting outfit. “It’s going to be a hard road, but I’m a bit of a work horse and don’t mind having to fight for it.”