The United States SailGP Team announced its expanded commitment to social purpose, building upon SailGP’s existing gender equity and sustainability commitments to focus on advancing diversity and inclusivity in American sailing.
As part of this commitment, the U.S. SailGP Team recognizes the high barrier to entry that currently exists for professional sailing and aims to challenge the status quo by advocating for expanded gender, racial and socioeconomic diversity in the sport through new purpose-led initiatives.
The announcement comes as part of SailGP’s broader Race for the Future purpose-led agenda, which aims to use the league’s platform as the sport’s pinnacle league to drive meaningful change towards a better sport and a better planet.
“We feel that, as a team, representing the USA goes beyond just winning on the water, it means leading off the water as well,” said U.S. SailGP Team helm and CEO Jimmy Spithill.
“We believe that the conversation around advancing diversity and inclusion in our sport is one of the most important in which we can participate and we are committed to taking an authentic, long-term approach in how we contribute to the solution.”
The U.S. SailGP Team will kick-off this long-term, purpose-driven effort on June 3, when it introduces a new, breakthrough development initiative for American athletes designed to be a catalyst for advancing greater diversity and inclusion in high-performance sailing while also engaging with communities that have historically seen low representation and exposure to the sport.
“We designed this initiative to create more opportunities and accessible entry points into the sport and we hope that our efforts will inspire further change to make competitive sailing accessible for underrepresented groups,” said Spithill. “We’d like to invite the American sailing community to join us in our mission and we look forward to sharing more in the coming weeks.”
SailGP Season 2 continues next week with racing resuming in Taranto, Italy, June 5-6 as the U.S. SailGP Team looks to climb the overall leaderboard at the Italy Sail Grand Prix.
Main image © SailGP