Ryan Bridge: Yes, sport is dangerous

Full credit to Tom Slingsby at the Aussies on their victory over the weekend. It obviously didn’t hurt that the Black Foils and Burling, and the French, crashed out.  It was brutal to watch. I was at the racing on Saturday in the grandstand and up close, you get a sense of how fast they’re going and how close they are to one another. And that’s what makes it such a thrill. You’re not meant to say that, but everybody there on Saturday was as hyped about the near-misses and close calls as they were about the results and actual racing. That's human nature. You can’t look away from a car crash.  It’s the same reason UFC is nipping at the heels of boxing and Run If Straight is now a thing people watch and get paid for. We like the excitement of somebody possibly getting hurt or injured. Throw in the fact athletes take the risks, hopefully calculated ones, and come out victorious… and you have yourself an afternoon of entertainment. There’s skill and talent and technology involved, no doubt. But you wouldn’t turn up to watch a Sail GP boat race itself.  The question is whether people will still be thrilled by a split-fleet format with fewer boats jostling for position, which is a move that was apparently on the cards anyway. And if this is the first of many safety improvements, how different will the competition look and feel? Look at what happened to rugby union when safety overtook entertainment.  If you don’t give people action, they go find it elsewhere.  Now, don't get me wrong. I’m not saying I want crashes galore and let’s throw caution to the wind and create the equivalent of bumper cars on water, but it must surely be something organiser will be thinking about.  And as for Burling, did he push it too far? If he executed the exact same race and won without crashing, nobody would be complaining. But that’s the thing about this competition, it’s fractions of technology, weather and conditions that make a difference. There's talk his rudder failed him. Was that driver-inducted failure or just bad luck? Nobody wins playing safe. And people don’t watch sport for its safety features. At the same time, to win a race you’ve got to finish it. And that lesson, more than any change to the rules, might be what slows drivers like Burling down a touch in future. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.