⛵️ F1, on water?

Taking football out of the equation, one of the sports at which Brazil has enjoyed the most success is sailing, winning a total of eight Olympic gold medals in the country’s history — more than any other event at the Games.

But Olympic sailing, for all its intricacies and tradition, has long struggled to attract any sizable audience, with its drawn-out and meandering races not making for the most compelling viewing for the uninitiated.

Contrast that, however, with last weekend’s events in Rio de Janeiro, as thousands of spectators gathered to watch 50-foot catamarans zoom around the Guanabara Bay, reaching speeds of almost 100 kilometers an hour. Alas, this isn’t Olympic sailing, this is SailGP, the nascent global competition that claims to have “cracked the code” of this centuries-old sport…

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