Sébastien Schneiter: The only way is up...

When we spoke the Swiss skipper was in Quiberon, France preparing for the upcoming 49er World Championship – an event that’s a key milestone in his personal campaign to represent his country at the Olympic Games for an impressive fourth consecutive time in Los Angeles in 2028. It’s also an event that begins just two days after the fifth SailGP regatta of Season 6 which takes place in Bermuda over the weekend of May 9–10.

How tricky has he found juggling a full-on Olympic campaign with his commitments to SailGP to be, I wondered.

“It's definitely quite tight at times, so we have to be smart with our planning,” Schneiter told me. “But I think it's great to be able to combine both – especially now that my 49er crew – Arno de Planta – is also part of the SailGP team. I think we can really use that as an opportunity to develop our sailing relationship. Mixing it up together in SailGP is really helping to push us on. The way we look at it is that the Olympics and SailGP are essentially two different visions, but with the same goal.”

The Swiss team’s lowly standing so far this season comes after what Schneiter maintains was a positive performance during Season 5, in which – despite finishing in eighth overall – regularly saw them win races and even make it to the final three-way shootout at two events.

The Swiss skipper told me he had been pleased with those highlights, particularly given that the crew line-up included two new sailors to the squad in the form of Swiss America’s Cup campaigners Arnaud Psarofaghis (wing trim) and Bryan Mettraux (flight control).

“I feel like we had a quite a decent season in terms of being a new squad,” he said. “I think we went from being that new team that was trying to find out what's possible, or how things work, to a team that was able to win races to taste some podiums as well.

“Then we go into this year with exactly the same team – so obviously, our goals were higher. We definitely wanted to be on the top half of the leaderboard. But the beginning of the season has been a bit different to what we expected, and I think the results so far don’t really show the true quality of the team. That said, the level in SailGP in general is now so high that there's really not much room for mistakes – and I think we have learned that the hard way.”