Andrew: Why I’m so proud of the U.S. SailGP Team’s groundbreakers

Strategist Andrew Campbell talks Martine, Anna, Switzerland and beyond

Published 09/24/2026

In sport you have to expect the unexpected. Even with that in mind, the week leading up to the Switzerland Sail Grand Prix was a chaotic one, but there are a lot of silver linings coming out of this weekend.

The overall mood of the team is still very upbeat, which speaks to the kind of culture that we've been working on and the type of group that we are. We need to be resilient at the moment, and we're meeting that task. We just need to see this as exactly what it was, which was a stepping stone towards the last two events of the season.

I am extremely proud of the organization for demonstrating that having two women on board should be a norm in sailing, and is something that all teams are capable of here. I think it's a really exciting thing to have happened.

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I’ve got daughters and for them to be able to see that there were two women on the F50 is just the coolest thing in the world. It transcends sport and I’m just bursting with pride that this team made that happen.

I'd never raced with Martine before, but I respect her reputation and how she's earned herself a seat in this league; her resumé speaks for itself. Putting her in for Taylor was not an easy task because they have different styles of how they race the boat, different communication styles and strengths.

We’ve set our team up to empower Taylor in a variety of conditions. To lose him exposes us to having to learn a new person's version of all of that. To just drop Martine into that spot was not easy – they're big shoes to fill. So, we didn't change very much other than trying to figure out very quickly - in one day of practice - how to support her to do her best in our framework.

We saw moments of great racing from the team – particularly in Friday’s official practice racing. We led around most of the racetrack in one of the races on Sunday, and just got caught on the wrong side of a shift. Those are some really gleaming moments that I think show that our team has the ability to be resilient when we're under pressure.

Martine took on the challenge and embraced it, and the team rallied around her. I'm sorry that we couldn't come up with a couple of points of our own, but there were some really important things that we did this weekend that we could scrounge within the racing that helped keep us in touch with our competitors as we fight for the Season Championship.

What you saw across the weekend was how important the starts became in lighter air, because there's such an effect of the fleet on the wind on the racecourse. Starting is something that we prioritize enormously. It's something Taylor has been working on, with the help of our performance staff, and we've been making improvements there.

That is one of the glaring points of the weekend: how those communications work, the nuance of who is responsible for what action and what decision, and when. In those pre-start moments, when that split-second decision has to be made - either by the driver, or by a comment here or a shade of opinion there - counts for a lot.

Those are the margins in this league that make such a big difference. When you bring someone new into the team, no matter how experienced they are, it takes time to build the communication and understanding that normally comes from racing together. Martine understood immediately how we wanted to work, but developing that shorthand takes time, and time is never something you have enough of in this league.

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We talk about this at the event level: anytime that you're in the hunt to get into the final race on Sunday, you're feeling pretty good about how you're doing. There are not many teams in the hunt going into these last two races.

There are only a few teams that have the opportunity to do this, and we are one of them. These are once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. I've been in the Final before. I know what these final-stretch runs can look like, and I know that this team is capable of making that run.

The biggest challenge is that we have six weeks before these next events. So it's about buckling down, getting fit, and keeping our team communication loop tight, so that we can make incremental gains on all the things I've already talked about between now and the two events in the UAE.

It's all out there. The opportunity just doesn't come that often and, when it's there, you've got to go and grab it. I think the team's ready to do it.

Speak soon,

Andrew

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