Trey Nyoni sat in the stands alongside the man who has seen every step of his development.

England Under-19s had just beaten Portugal 6-0 in Braga and Nyoni’s father was one of only a handful of parents who had stuck around to see it.

After a long international camp away from family and three Euros qualifiers, a few minutes in person to debrief the performance and look to the future were clearly well received by the midfielder, who was excellent on the day.

The hope back then, at the end of March, with Liverpool still in the FA Cup and Champions League, was that before the end of the campaign, Nyoni would get another opportunity to shine. Having not started a senior game in five months, he returned to Merseyside with a spring in his step after three Under-19 outings.

But the closing 10 games of the season would bring little joy, and instead it was fellow under-19 team-mate, Rio Ngumoha, who benefited from an end-of-season boost.

Nyoni with friend and team-mate Rio Ngumoha (Michael Regan/Getty Images)

While Ngumoha thrived as he made eight appearances, including three starts, before becoming the most talked-about player in a friendly for the England senior team against New Zealand before the World Cup, Nyoni was given just nine minutes of action, with seven of those arriving in the final game of the season.

His 14 appearances across the campaign were an improvement on the five outings he made the season before, but nowhere near enough to build any momentum. Apart from two starts in the Carabao Cup early in the season, Nyoni was largely restricted to late cameos in the closing minutes of games.

With Champions League qualification in the balance until the final game of the season, perhaps it was not a surprise that former head coach Arne Slot stuck with his senior players to get over the line, although the alternative view is that a refresh in midfield — when legs were clearly tiring — may have given the team a new lease of life.

A host of Championship clubs and multiple others across Europe contacted Liverpool to discuss a loan in January, but Nyoni was needed as cover.

Tyler Morton, the midfielder who moved to Lyon and enjoyed a stunning first season in France, fell into the same category a year earlier before he took the plunge and left Anfield after a couple of successful temporary moves.

It was expected that Nyoni would listen to loan offers this summer and wait for Liverpool’s guidance, but the situation has changed. No longer is a temporary move under consideration as he focuses on making an impact at Liverpool. The alternative of considering a new project elsewhere has also cooled in recent weeks after an impressive summer.

If there’s any player who has benefited from the pre-season period, it’s Nyoni. New head coach Andoni Iraola said after the U.S. tour, where the 19-year-old was the standout performer: “Even when he has one opponent quite close, he asks for that ball and he’s confident, he doesn’t rush. For me, that is very valuable.”

Nyoni has had an impressive pre-season (KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI / AFP via Getty Images)

Iraola admires his playing style but whether that translates into more game time — which Nyoni now needs — remains to be seen. Other clubs had signalled they were willing to offer the platform for regular minutes, but his immediate future remains at Liverpool and the first half of this season will be crucial.

The context around Nyoni is also important as it helps explain the position he found himself in this summer.

Yes, he only recently turned 19, and it’s a lot to expect a young man to step up and control the midfield for Liverpool. As a player with a slight figure, he’s also had to work hard on building up his body to match his undeniable technical qualities.

But playing just 21 minutes in the Premier League last season was hardly a convincing pathway for a deeper run in the future. When Nyoni last met up with England Under-19s, he played in midfield alongside Harrison Armstrong and Chris Rigg, both of whom played more often for Everton and Sunderland last season.

Arsenal’s Max Dowman also played for longer across the campaign and he missed half of it through injury. Even Chelsea’s Jesse Derry, who has since joined Sporting CP on loan for the season, played more Premier League minutes.

In a short space of time, so much has been said about Nyoni, first by Jurgen Klopp, who gave him his debut after Liverpool signed him from Leicester City in 2023, then Slot, and of course those working behind the scenes. Now, though, it’s his time to shine, whether that’s for Liverpool or elsewhere.

That Iraola wants him to stick around is a good sign. He’s a confident, progressive passer who can sit in front of the defence and play an important role in the build-up of attacks. With Curtis Jones in discussions to leave for Inter, there’s an opportunity to move up the pecking order and spend more time on the pitch.

His experience of training with senior international team-mates for the past two years has also helped his progress and his steady rise is now ready for lift-off.

Two members of the Milligan University cycling team were killed and seven others were injured, and a driver was charged with vehicular homicide on Wednesday after officials said he struck riders who were training on a mountain highway in Tennessee.

Sophomores Brayden Rogers and Haylan Engdahl were killed in the crash, which happened around 8 a.m., according to Milligan, a private Christian liberal arts school in northeastern Tennessee, near Johnson City. The crash occurred on Highway 19E near Simerly Creek Road in Carter County, the Tennessee Highway Patrol said on social media.

The driver, John Benfield, 69, of Newland, N.C., has been charged with two counts of vehicular homicide by recklessness and five counts of aggravated assault by vehicle by recklessness, Steven R. Finney, the district attorney general for Carter County, said at a news conference. Benfield was booked into jail.

“It is more important than ever right now that we are a community gathered around Jesus and we need Jesus deeply,” Stephen Waers, the president of Milligan, said in a YouTube video. “I’d like to invite you into prayer with us, into grief with us, into prayer for the families of those we have lost, into prayer for those who are still receiving treatment.”

Seven of the school’s 11 cyclists were taken to Johnson City Medical Center to receive care, according to Waers. Authorities did not release further information on their condition.

Tennessee Highway Patrol Maj. Roy Brown said at the news conference that a large number of emergency workers responded to the crash, including multiple air medical teams transporting injured people for treatment. Brown said the crash remains under investigation.

“We know the families, the Milligan community and people across this region want answers,” the Tennessee Highway Patrol said in a statement. “We want those answers too. Our responsibility now is to conduct a careful and thorough investigation and provide information based on the facts.”

Finney said officials will reach out to the families of the victims to organize a group meeting so they can receive the “answers that we can give” regarding the case. He added that Milligan, with an enrollment of around 1,200 students, had an “elite cycling team.”

In May, Milligan’s cycling team claimed the men’s team time trial national title at the USA Cycling Collegiate Road Nationals in Madison, Wis.

“It’s not a bunch of those club guys getting together to ride,” Finney said. “They know what they’re doing. They rode in a peloton. One of the boys just won last weekend in one of the local races.”

“I want the media to know, and I want our community to know that these young men chose to come here, chose to come to this school, and they are members of our community as such,” he added. “You should treat them with the grace and the dignity — and their families — that they deserve.”

This story is part of The Athletic’s coverage of SailGP, an international sailing competition that has been likened to Formula 1 on water. Follow SailGP here.

No one predicted the sleepy backwater of Sassnitz would be rebranded ‘Crashnitz’ or ‘Smashnitz’ by the end of the first edition of the German Sail Grand Prix last year.

After a weekend of carnage, as well as some exciting racing, this small, picturesque seaside town in northeastern Germany, which not many around the world will have heard of, was put on the sailing map.

As Germany’s driver Erik Kosegarten-Heil builds up to another weekend of competition on home waters this weekend, he is reminded of the drama from last August, when the moniker ‘Crashnitz’ entered the SailGP lexicon.

“It was amazing, right? Luckily, no one got hurt, but for the media, it was so impressive — the big picture we created from that first crash-filled day of practice racing,” he told The Athletic.

Friday’s practice should have been straightforward. There was nothing dramatic about the conditions. But on a standard bear-away maneuver at the windward end of the course (a high-speed turn out of Mark 1), French driver Quentin Delapierre turned his F50 downwind at close to 60 mph (100 km/h) and suffered a nosedive and sudden stop.

The starboard-side (the right side of the boat as you stand forward) T-foil rudder ripped off the back of the boat and flew into the air.

Fortunately, the large chunk of fly-away carbon-fiber foil tomahawked past the boat and was nowhere close to the French crew.

But Delapierre was flung forwards violently by the rapid deceleration and suffered a nasty face-plant into the cockpit. He was taken to hospital and later signed off as fit to race, leading his team to the unlikeliest of victories on the Sunday.

Just seconds later, in a separate incident, the Brazilian F50 was about to go into a standard jibe maneuver (turning the boat through the wind to change direction) but disintegrated in the blink of an eye.

The front cross-beam (a structure that links the hulls at the front of the boat) snapped and the catamaran collapsed into its constituent pieces, with the wingsail falling to the water. Subsequent analysis would show it was operator error by the team that led to the breakage, although the reasons were far from anyone’s mind at the time.

Simon Nuding, the head of safety for SailGP at the time, recalled that moment of mayhem. “We were staring down the barrel,” he said. “We were positioned on the boundary opposite Mark 1, watching the whole fleet come toward us. We saw there was an issue with France. At that distance, you can’t instantly see if a rudder is broken, but one of our spotters or divers on the boat said that France had lost their rudder.

“As we were getting into position to make our way around the fleet — having to wait for the fleet to pass us before we could go back up that one-way system — Brazil, one of the last boats coming around, disintegrated right in front of us. We were probably a maximum of 60 to 70 meters away from Brazil when she had that catastrophic failure, so we were on scene pretty quick.”

Nuding and his team had no time to dwell on anything other than getting into rapid response mode. While the French incident would normally have been a major priority for Nuding’s team, Brazil had to take precedence.

“We had two rescue boats heading to Brazil. One came from the start line, passed France, because with what we saw with Brazil, there was a real risk of someone being trapped underwater, which meant prioritizing our assets.

“Once we got a headcount and understood every sailor was accounted for, we split the assets back up.”

There was also a racing incident on Saturday, a major collision between the United States and Great Britain, where Taylor Canfield’s American team failed to keep clear in time.

Again, there was major damage to the F50s but no injuries to the sailors. But this season, sailors have been seriously injured. Louis Sinclair, for example, suffered fractures to both legs when New Zealand and France collided at the New Zealand Grand Prix in Auckland in February.

The most recent event in Portsmouth was the first time all 13 teams started and finished a Grand Prix weekend without major incident, the closest being a dramatic almost-but-not-quite capsize by the German team.

When The Athletic put it to Nuding that an incident-free weekend has become unusual, he disagreed. “Unusual? No, if you go back to the 10- or 11-boat seasons, there was a long period where we were incident-free,” said Nuding, who first joined the safety as rescue co-ordinator in 2022.

Uneventful is a good thing in Nuding’s world. “It’s a good thing in everyone’s world,” he said. “These sailors are our friends and colleagues; we see them every day. It’s not good for us, for SailGP, or for the industry.”

While sailors don’t wish for major incidents, they also know drama sells.

“It’s perfect if you want to set attention up for something,” said Kosegarten-Heil. “On the other side, everyone is concerned about the safety of sailing these boats. So you would never wish for it. But last year was really great, having this build-up and level of excitement.”

Germany was close to capsizing while racing alongside France in the opening race in Portsmouth last month. (Ricardo Pinto for SailGP)

With that in mind, perhaps it’s not all bad that the German team came closest to calamity at the end of July in Portsmouth, without quite tipping the wrong side of a fine line.

After leading at Mark 1 following an unusually good start, things swiftly went from great to bad to worse in a short space of time. Looking back at the data from that incident, Kosegarten-Heil has learned that the maximum angle of lean was 58 degrees, as the F50 came alarmingly close to tipping over.

The mighty, looming presence of Spitbank Fort, a Napoleonic-era structure in the middle of the race course, wasn’t helping. The jibe (the triangular sail) was rushed, and wing trimmer Kevin Peponnet was struggling to run across the boat in time, while Kosegarten-Heil and his strategist, Anna Barth, had a misunderstanding about which side of the fort they were aiming to pass. “We had a couple of things go wrong,” Kosegarten-Heil said.

With a strong tide running in the Solent, and the proximity of that unyielding Napoleonic fort, there might not have been much to salvage from the boat if the Germans had capsized. Even after bringing the F50 flat back to the water, the uncertainty wasn’t over. “We now had maybe 10,000 liters of water in the hull,” Kosegarten-Heil said. “I was wondering if the structure of the hull is strong enough to carry on with the race.”

Germany nearly capsizes as the boat turns near the Napoleonic fort in Portsmouth. (Ricardo Pinto for SailGP)

Did he hold back from racing? “We still had the chance for one point at least in that race and we had to continue. We sent Anna over to the other side of the boat to open the (draining) flaps manually and to make sure we’re losing the water as quickly as possible.”

So, apart from losing a race-winning lead, there was no real harm done from that near-capsize. And now the Germans have a home event.

It’s not been a stellar season so far for Kosegarten-Heil and the crew, who sit in eighth place on the leaderboard.

“We had an amazing event last year. Sassnitz was a big turning point for our 2025 season and gave us a lot of strength. We were better around the race course for the remainder of the season and our starts were better. This year we’re also lacking this skill on the start line a bit. We discuss a lot and we debrief a lot, and I hope Sassnitz is again the turning point this season for our starting average.”

As to whether Sassnitz shakes off its nicknames from last year, that partly depends on what happens this weekend. The funny thing is, Nuding and the safety team never had Sassnitz down as one of the riskier venues.

“As a safety team, you enter venues like Perth or San Francisco expecting the worst,” he said. “But we went into Sassnitz looking at it as a medium-risk venue, nowhere near as extreme as San Francisco, Sydney, or Auckland. It should be nice, flat water, close to the tech base.

“Then all these incidents happen. It’s a reminder that in boating, the biggest problems normally start with the smallest things. These F50s are there to bite you if you let them off the leash or aren’t looking out for them.”

How to watch

The Germany Sail Grand Prix takes place on August 22 and August 23 from 8 a.m. ET (1 p.m. BST). Fans in the U.S. can watch live online via BeIN Connect, while in the UK, racing will be on TNT Sports. For a list of broadcasters elsewhere in the world, click here.