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HomeSailGPRunup to AucklandPeter Burling: Leading with precision on and off the water

Peter Burling: Leading with precision on and off the water

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As the New Zealand SailGP team gears up for a thrilling home race, Peter Burling, one of the most decorated sailors in the world, stands at the helm, ready to deliver another masterclass in high-performance sailing. Combining his role as the team’s driver and co-CEO, Burling embodies a unique balance of tactical precision, leadership, and passion for the sport.

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This morning (Tuesday 14 January) the Boating New Zealand team had the absolute pleasure of catching up with much-loved New Zealand sailor Peter Burling, CEO of the Black Foils and driver of Amokura, at the SailGP Village, in Auckland, New Zealand.

Behind us, the teams who hadn’t practiced out on the water yesterday, lifted their boats onto the water and headed out. The weather had settled since yesterday afternoon; the winds still there but not as strong and the gusts had died down. By this afternoon, it is likely the winds will have picked up again, making today’s practice session potentially as invigorating as yesterday’s – good strong Hauraki Gulf winds! By all accounts, Auckland’s winds and veritable gusts might not be something the teams are used to, and yesterday, today, and the next few days might be a lesson on how to sail⏤and sail fast⏤in faster winds.

Focusing on Peter Burling, we had the pleasure of meeting him in person for the first time during an interview with Boating New Zealand, where we finally got to ask the questions we’ve been eager to discuss. He took our questions and answered in a calm, unassuming manner. It’s easy to see why he creates magic on the water with his team—he exudes a quiet strength that naturally inspires trust.

Our first question related to how he balances his roles of CEO and driver. For Burling, balancing the dual responsibilities of driving the boat and overseeing the team is no small feat. SailGP’s high-pressure environment demands meticulous planning both on and off the water. Although it has become harder and harder as the number of competitors in the challenge has increased, Burling has found that delegating responsibility, so others can take some of the workload helps keep things moving forward.

“There’s a pretty limited window to be out there sailing these boats,” Burling explained. “Combining on-water and off-water roles has been challenging but rewarding. Delegating responsibilities to a strong team has been key to keeping everything moving forward.”

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Then we asked Pete how, over the seasons, he has developed his skills as a driver, specifically in SailGP. His answer was no surprise and reflects his composure when out on the water: “SailGP it’s all about getting results. It’s all about winning the races that you should win, and if you’re up and through the back, making your way forward through the fleet, you’ve really got to try and keep the boats apart, and just keep progressing and improving. So trying to be really consistent, and making sure the crew has a good understanding of what’s expected and what you’re planning on doing on a given day. So a lot of planning goes on in the background, a lot of hard work, but I think it really pays off.”

New livery for the Black Foils boat / Credit: Boating New Zealand

This philosophy has cemented New Zealand’s position as a formidable force in the league, with his leadership playing a pivotal role.

Reflecting on the yesterday’s strong to gusty wind, we asked how sailing out in the Gulf in these conditions compared to the Dubai event where the winds were far more subdued, to non-existent at times. Pete responded: “Yeah, it’s been a long time since we’ve sailed these boats in wind, and I think if you look back through our whole way through SailGP, the amount of days we get in at that wind-stream has probably been two or three since I’ve been involved. So every day you get in the upper end of the wind-stream, you’ve really got to make the most of it. It’s always a bit hard to be your first day sailing the boats in a long time, but I think we did a good job kind of ramping up to it, and just getting more and more comfortable as time went on.”

Next we asked about this weekend’s upcoming weather and how Burling felt it might impact the sailing, and his team. His response, which reflects on why he is such a good sailor: “You’ve got to deal with what you’ve got, you’ve got to play with whatever conditions are given. For us, it’s looking like an easterly this week, hopefully the rain holds off. Most of the models you look at, it looks like there isn’t going to be much rain, it’s just going to be an awesome breeze. The easterly will actually be awesome on this race track. It gives us a little bit longer legs than the southerly, which would be super short. I don’t know, a day like yesterday would have been pretty challenging up here. [We’re] looking forward to racing.”

We continued chat about  how he deals with the pressure of racing, particularly in-front of a home crowd. Pete’s answer reflects on his winning mind-set, that desire to perservere, and improve, until he and his team win⏤a team leader at all levels: “If you’re an athlete, you’ve got to enjoy the pressure, right? You’ve got to be able to perform when it matters, and there’s so many times where the difference between a few points is massive, whether it’s scrapping through to the final, or a few metres to get you in front on a race, and those pressure moments are really where I think the good teams excel and move forward, or other teams drop back, so you’ve got to continue to evolve, and I’m really looking forward to that excitement of racing in front of a home crowd, and all the support we get here is just amazing, so we absolutely love it.” 

Winner! Peter Burling, co-CEO and driver of New Zealand SailGP Team on the podium as they spray Barons De Rothschild Champagne in celebration with the New Zealand SailGP Team on Race Day 2 of the Emirates Dubai Sail Grand Prix presented by P&O Marinas in Dubai, UAE. Sunday 24 November 2024. Photo: Christopher Pike for SailGP. Photo credit: SailGP

He obviously thrives on the pressure and enjoys the drive to win; so how does he prepare for a race? Burling: “We do a warm-up. I like to be realistically prepared going into the weekend, knowing you’ve done all the hard work in the background, that you’re ready to go essentially. That for me is the most important part; just making sure that you’ve done all the hard work in the background, and you’re really comfortable with your plans, and how you’re going about things for the weekend. It puts you in a really good space to change as well, if things aren’t going so well.”

In March last year (2024), Burling and his wife, Lucinda (Lucy), welcomed a daughter turning their family of two into a family of three. We asked how having a child has changed his priorities, whether his focus has moved at all, and how he has encompassed the extra responsibility. In his understated way Pete said “It’s absolutely awesome to become a dad. I absolutely love the journey there. I’ve got an amazing wife [who] helps me out a lot along the way. I think it just really shows you that value of time, and how important it is, and really motivates you when you’re at an event like this to give it your all and to not waste a second of the time. I think that’s so you can really enjoy your spare time on other things.”

Pete and Lucy, with their daughter. Photo credit: Peter Burling/Facebook

Then he added when asked about whether Lucy and his nine-month daughter travel with him on SailGP events: “We are kind of based away for a big part of the year and stayed away through to the first SailGP event of the season, so it was cool to do a bit of traveling as a family. This year, to be honest, we haven’t really made a plan. [They’re] definitely coming to quite a few events, but I’m not quite sure which ones yet. You end up spending so much time away that if you want to make it work, you’ve got to do a bit of travel every now and then, [and it’s] also really cool to see what’s going on in the rest of the world.”

Our second-to-last question focused on who their key rivals were. Always the diplomat, he answered: “It’s looking like a windy weekend. That means we’ll be racing on the new high-speed configuration, and we haven’t seen anyone race on that configuration yet. Everyone’s at a really high standard. Everyone’s with all the shared data, and knows what all the other teams are up to. It seems like different configurations, and different racecourses fit into different teams’ skill sets more or less than others. So it’s going to be something really interesting to see over the next few days, what teams are shaping up to be performing at a high level and how everyone’s doing.”

But never-one to let a question go unanswered, we pushed a little harder; Burling pushed back: “I think there’s probably five or six teams that are in this speed that I would expect to be right at the front end of the fleet. Obviously us, the Australians, the British, Canadians, Danish. There’s obviously a few newer teams that have done a little bit less time, particularly the Brazilians and the Italians, that you’d expect to be more to that end of the fleet. And then there’s the rest in the middle. But it’s such a tight format that you get a lot of momentum in the first couple of races. You can carry it through, probably like the Americans did in the last year in Dubai. Definitely, if you looked at form at the end of last season, you wouldn’t have expected them to be in the final, and then they put together an awesome event and went pretty close to winning it. So it’s something you’ve just got to be on your game every weekend. You’ve got to be sailing at the top level, and we’re excited to try and do that again this weekend.” 

Friendly rivals, Peter Burling, from NZL’s Black Foils with Tom Slingsby, from AUS SailGP team / Credit: Boating New Zealand

Our last question was a reader question (we’d asked readers to send us questions before we went to meet Burling). It’s actually a really good question, and now having visited the inners of the SailGP village, we were keen for an answer to as well.

This question was asked by Marc Michel on Facebook: “SailGP says “powered by wind” and low carbon on the boats yet so fair I have seen about 100 x 40 foot containers, several hundred semi trailer loads packing in multiple cranes, forklifts, and a dozen twin outboard chase boats – how is that low carbon?” Burling: “There is a lot of ecology, there’s a lot of environmental concern going into SailGP. They travel with a lot of containers. Do we find that actually conflicts at all with the mentality of making everything more environmentally friendly, or not really?

“I think as a league we know we’ve got a carbon footprint, but really for us it’s about how do we minimise that and how do we use our platform we have as sport to do some other really cool things. For example, the broadcast all happens in the UK. Everyone’s based in the UK, no one travels. There’s a massive centralised service that does a lot of the maintenance on the boat. There’s a lot of containers here, but if you look at the 12 teams worth, you would have traditionally had to travel with to service that kind of amount of equipment. It would be a whole heap more than what we do today.

“A lot of what we do is about minimising the footprint, and just creating more efficient ways to operate. Every team’s got a purpose partner. Ours is LiveOcean, which is [about a] healthy ocean for a healthy planet.”

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Chris Woodhams
Chris Woodhams
Adventurer. Explorer. Sailor.

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