Australia won two of Saturday’s four races, cementing their lead in Bermuda.
Photo: Bob Martin / SailGP
The Australian team, known as the Bonds Flying Roos and led by Tom Slingsby, finished Day One atop the standings in the fifth event of the SailGP season. They are tied on points with Los Gallos, the consistent Spanish squad skippered by Diego Botin.
Bermuda holds special significance for Slingsby, who competed there in the 2017 America’s Cup. The 41-year-old looked comfortable on the Great Sound under ideal conditions: winds of 13 to 17 knots gusting across flat water, pushing the F50s near their top speed of 60 mph. “This place is exactly what the boats were designed for in 2017,” Slingsby said, referencing the 50-foot foiling catamarans originally built for the America’s Cup before Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison acquired them for SailGP.
Australia claimed two of the four races on Saturday and narrowly missed a third victory, edged out by the Spanish team. The U.S. team, skippered by Taylor Canfield, won the first race, continuing their resurgence after a disastrous 2025 season marked by errors. They sit in third place overall, ahead of Germany and Canada, both of whom are enjoying their best performances this season.
However, setbacks hit other teams. Glenn Ashby, a 48-year-old Australian who came out of retirement to assist Slingsby’s team earlier this year after Iain “Goobs” Jensen injured his knee in Perth, had been helping the French team as a wing trimmer following the severe crash in Auckland in February between France and New Zealand. On Saturday, Ashby broke his ankle after losing his footing during a high-speed maneuver. He missed two races, and Australia loaned spare sailor Tom Needham to France for the final race. French skipper Quentin Delapierre expressed frustration: “That’s our mood at the moment. We’ve been lucky to have Tom Needham, an Australian youngster, with us today, and he did a bloody good job. It was not easy conditions, it was windy, and he managed to keep a stable platform, and he did an unbelievable job on every maneuver.”
Team France led by Quentin Delapierre in action alongside Rockwool Racing. (Photo: Jason Ludlow / SailGP)
Technical issues also plagued some teams, preventing them from competing in all four races. Denmark started well with a seventh-place finish followed by a second, but a recurring problem struck again. Skipper Nicolai Sehested explained: “This is the fourth event in a row where we have had to lose a day. So it’s just frustrating now and we’re a bit over it. Our up-down line for getting the (foiling) board up and down failed again, after failing yesterday in practice. It was repaired overnight but it went wrong again, and we just had to get around the course in Race Three and Four to see what points we could get because other people had retired.”
