Picking up where they left off in January, Peter Burling’s Black Foils have claimed their third consecutive win in the UAE, soaring ahead of the Emirates Great Britain and US SailGP Team on the pristine waters of Port Mina Rashid. The Black Foils are back-to-back-winners of the Rolex SailGP Championship’s season-opening event.

New Zealand driver Peter Burling said, “Awesome play from the group – I mean as a new team to get to the final this week – it’s one of the hardest things in this light air. And we really pulled it out this season and got a great start and hit it right at mark one. I made a bad choice making it a bit more complicated – taking a right turn – which put us right back in the pack but then it was clean, and it was good to race from there to take a win.”

Following a day of technical, light-air racing on Saturday, the 11-strong Rolex SailGP Championship fleet enjoyed breezy, foiling conditions – providing a spectacle for fans watching along the shoreline.

Finishing in third was an ecstatic US SailGP Team Driver Taylor Canfield, who celebrated, “Any event going on the podium is incredible, so it’s awesome to see how all the hard work we have put in is paying off. It’s early stages, and we have a lot to build on –- but the team are working hard and made a huge jump here overnight. And everyone dug in deep and found a way to get better for today. That’s the goal and it just shows how driven, and that everyone’s got that fight in them – so yeah we are pumped.”

The Emirates Dubai Sail Grand Prix, presented by P&O Marinas marked a welcome shift for the all-American crew, who have not made it on the podium since the last time they raced in the Middle East. The team delivered a consistent performance on both days of racing, earning the critical points needed to clinch a spot in the podium final.

Celebrating an impressive second place podium finish at his first event since Season 1, Emirates GBR Driver Dylan Fletcher proved he’s more than capable of competing against the best athletes in the sport.

Heading into the fifth and final fleet race of the weekend, a tight battle for third was poised between a handful of teams, including Emirates GBR and reigning Rolex SailGP Champions Spain. But it wasn’t to be for Los Gallos, who couldn’t manage to stay in front of Fletcher and missed out on the three-boat final. Despite leading the fleet heading into day two, the Flying Roo of the Australian SailGP team also missed out after finishing last in race five.

One of SailGP’s two new nations in the 2025 Season, Red Bull Italy, missed out on event points whilst fellow debut Mubadala Brazil added their first point to the Rolex SailGP Championship standings.

Mubadala Brazil SailGP Team Driver Martine Grael said, “There were a lot of challenges. Some during the first day – our first time on the big wings. I think it’s all going well and I’m very happy with our crew. We’ve been trying to improve a lot in the last few days, so it’s been a steep learning curve.”

The league now heads down under in January, with the Rolex SailGP’s first event of the new year, the ITM New Zealand Sail Grand Prix | Auckland (January 18-19, 2025). The event will be the league’s long-awaited debut in the city. “We’re super excited to get home,” Burling said. “The buzz in town is already growing. The renders of the grandstand, which is just about to get built, is amazing. So, for any Kiwis who have not bought tickets yet, it’s going to be an amazing weekend.”

EMIRATES DUBAI SAIL GRAND PRIX, PRESENTED BY P&O MARINAS DAY TWO STANDINGS

EMIRATES DUBAI SAIL GRAND PRIX, PRESENTED BY P&O MARINAS LEADERBOARD

The post SailGP’s Black Foils Start Season 5 With a Win appeared first on Sailing World.

The sailors of the US SailGP Team have been living their best Rockstar life in Dubai for about three weeks, acclimating for the first regatta of SailGP’s fifth season. They’ve played in a gigantic waterpark, bounced a concert, and bombed through the desert in dune buggies under a full moon. All of it so ridiculously amazing, says its strategist Mike Buckley, and that’s even before the lights and cameras of the media day, the VIPing and the practice sessions on their newly wrapped Lady Liberty in “Liberty Green.”

It’s all good, but it’s time to go racing.

The league has slapped down a bumped-up $12 million prize purse on the heels of announcing Rolex as title sponsor and a 10-year deal. The Rolex SailGP Championship is now a long season that circles back to the Middle East (Abu Dhabi) next November, with 14 international venues and 12 teams going for it. The US Team rookied its way through last season, under-skilled in the F50 and babes to the slaughter of the leagues veteran teams. But a summer training block in Bermuda in August, and productive days in Dubai with their new flight controller Hans Hanken, is a boost to their confidence.

“Our confidence—in executing maneuvers—is probably the biggest thing,” said helmsman Taylor Canfield. “We gained a lot of confidence in our ability to push the boat. In some of the venues and in some of the conditions last season where we were very inexperienced there was definitely some intimidation. The boat was sailing us a little bit, and now it feels like we’re sailing the boat and taking control. We have the confidence to do any maneuver that any of the top teams are doing now.”

That’s not just because of Henken’s mountain of experience as flight controller alongside Jimmy Spithill, the league’s undisputed GOAT. It’s the whole team, Buckley reminds: “Everybody’s so damn good on these teams. The experience certainly helps. But you need the chemistry, you need the communication, you need the confidence in each other to really move up the leaderboard. Some of these other teams have taken key people out or moved people around, and it’s going to be interesting to see how it stacks up.”

Weis is Jacked, As Is the Team

Buckley also believes he has an ace in the cockpit with jib trimmer and grinder Anna Weis. She’s been posted up at the Red Bull Athletic Performance Center, doing the heavy lifting so her grinding can get the F50 the lift it needs for “popping.”

She went into training at 14 pullups, Weis says. She’s now pulling 17. Canfield only dreams of that.

“I’m on for every single race, and that’s exactly why I train super hard, so that I can push as hard as I can in every single race,” Weiss says. And yes, when not hitting the handles hard, she’s also trimming the jib. “I think that especially in lighter conditions it’s going to be an advantage because the women are going to have to grind and four- and five-up sailing conditions (likely for Dubai), so it just gives our team a benefit that I have the experience and have been training for it.”

Light-winds on the practice day delivered mixed to marginally good results (5-7-8) for the US team, but those don’t count, Canfield says, as there was some “erratic behavior from some of the teams” and “umpires clearing calls whenever they want.”  

Still, Canfield said, “We stuck to our plan and had two decent starts and one really good start. We executed when we needed to and made a few mistakes. There’s no doubt with our sailing ability, how much it’s grown over the last month, that, if we sail our best, we can go out and have a good start and win the race.”

An Underdog Prone To Bite

If that were to be the case, the team on Lady Liberty would certainly shock the broadcast commentary team of SailGP, which put the US team at rock bottom of its pre-seasons rankings. “Haters gonna, hate,” Buckley says. “I think we’re a little misunderstood and frankly, everybody loves an underdog, right? And there’s a reason it’s called the American dream, so we’re gonna figure it out. It might not be tomorrow or the next day, but it’s really hard to beat people that are not willing to ever give up.”

As far Canfield is concerned, “It’s a long season, and with this many more boats, you’re going to see people having that big swings, they’re going to win races, and they’re going to have deep ones. So I think a good goal for the team right now is to play the averages, to come away with some threes and fours, and occasionally maybe a seven. We’ll start making finals pretty quickly if we aim for that.”

And it’s all live on Saturday and Sunday (November 23-24), 1 to 5 p.m. GST, on SailGP.com, YouTube and host broadcast networks.

The post No Doubts in Dubai For Rebooted US SailGP Team appeared first on Sailing World.

[Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include the addition of the Red Bull Italy SailGP Team to the roster of what is now the Rolex SailGP Championship, following the league’s long-term title sponsorship agreement with the Swiss watch brand.]

SailGP Season 4 is so yesterday, and today the professional sailing series is in full noise in Abu Dhabi with the first of 14 events getting underway this weekend following a flurry of off-season crew shuffles, team reboots and big-time announcements for the league created by Russell Coutts and Larry Ellison.

With a new season comes new expectations, so let’s get to it, starting with the US team, poised to make a move from the basement of the Season 4 rankings. The upstart US SailGP Team, which league broadcast commentators confidently put at the bottom of their pre-season prognostications, certainly has something to prove. With the benefit of an off-season training block in Bermuda over the summer and the addition of experienced flight controller and Olympic medalist Hans Henken to the team’s starting roster this week, they’re in a much better place and poised for the long season ahead which finishes in Abu Dhabi next November. Helmsman Taylor Canfield, team strategist and CEO Mike Buckley, wing trimmer Jeremy Wilmot, flight controllers Henken and Mac Agnese, and grinders Anna Weiss (also the designated jib trimmer), and Peter Kinney round out the All-American starting lineup, which will be out for points on its rebranded F50.

The Season 4 champions of Spain SailGP Team return largely intact with Rolex Yachtsmen of the Year and Olympic gold medalists Diego Botin and Florian Trittel, as well as Joel Rodriguez, the team’s flight controller. With this threesome locked into their normal positions and a solid grinding squad to pull from, there’s good reason to expect a strong showing from the defending champions.

Australia SailGP Team helmsman Tom Slingsby is now free of his America’s Cup distractions and will no doubt return to form, but he’s lost his longtime wingman Kyle Langford and the chemistry the two of them have perfected over the years. Smoothing the transition, however, is Chris Draper, who’s moved fluidly between various teams over the past few years as a reliable and experienced hand on the controls.

Slingsby has retained the rest of the Aussie line-up, including veteran flight controller Jason Waterhouse, grinders Kinley Fowler and Sam Newton, strategist Natasha Bryant and reserve strategist Nina Curtis. Confidence is high that the Aussies will find their way to Dubai’s three-boat finale and will continue to be contenders for the season purse once again.

The Canadian squad was hot and on the chopping block at the end of Season 4, but with a new helmsman in British Olympian and Giles Scott (and the dismissal of the league’s most entertaining helmsman Phil Robertson) and a rebrand as the Northstar SailGP Team, the Canucks are a true wildcard of the league once again. Wing trimmer Paul Campbell-James, who’s been in the league since the beginning, has seen most everything that can happen in an F50, remains with the team, as does strategist and past US Olympian Annie Haeger.

Emirates GBR SailGP Team’s most dramatic lineup change is Olympian and America’s Cup helmsman Dylan Fletcher assuming full control of the wheels from team principle Ben Ainslie, who no doubt was looking for a bit of mental break after a brutal America’s Cup campaign and keen to see the team develop with some new and younger energy. Ainslie will settle deeper into his CEO role.

“It’s a tough one because ultimately I love the sailing part more than anything,” Ainslie said in a team statement. “I still feel good physically, I can get around the boat just fine, but it’s about the future of the team and I don’t think the future of the team on the water should be based around me.”

It will be fascinating to watch develop the dynamic between Fletcher and ace strategist Hannah Mills, who led the INEOS Britannia’s AC40 Athena Pathway program into the Puig America’s Cup Final in Barcelona. Both have been immersed in pinnacle racing for the past year and at the top game, and that will certainly make a difference when the pressure is on.

Denmark’s Rockwool Racing, with its entertaining and humble helmsman in Nicolai Shehested, has been knocking at the top of the fleet for the past two seasons, beset by self-inflicted setbacks, so the announcement this week of onboarding Italian America’s Cup helmsman Francesco Bruni as a coach is welcome news to Rockwool fans. With teams now having direct communication with coaches on shore during the racing, the coach’s booth concept has had a significant impact on better consistency for some teams in Season 4 and as this relationship develops, Bruni will perhaps provide the sage wisdom to keep the Danes more consistent over the duration of the entire season.

Germany SailGP Team, now in its third season, has continued to be a regular presence at the back of the fleet, but with its squad returning behind helmsman Erik Heil, German fans hoped the team’s collective experience of late will advance them up the standings this year, leaving the newcomers of the Mubadala Brazil SailGP Team with the burden of rookie status.

But the Brazilians have the league’s sole female helmswoman of Martine Grael, a decorated medalist in the 49erFX, and a force on any racecourse. To fast-track with the F50, the Brazilians have tapped British wing trimmer Leigh McMillian and recruited flight controller Andy Maloney away from the New Zealand Black Foils camp. Grael was expecting to get up to speed with the F50 during the Bermuda training camp, but her time was cut short when the boat’s wing collapsed (no fault of the sailors), leaving them short on time in the boat.

The Swiss SailGP Team, unable to string together a winning package over the past three seasons have rebooted with an interesting new lineup that includes Alinghi Red Bull Racing America’s Cup helmsman Arnaud Psarofaghis as wing trimmer to helmsman Sebastian Schneiter on the wheels. Flight controller Bryan Mettraux is also new to the squad and the team’s management doubled-down on recruiting winning talent from other teams in the league to fill out other roles.

New Zealand, known now as the Black Foils, remains the spoiler as always. With Peter Burling and Blair Tuke fresh off their America’s Cup win in Barcelona, they’ll be eager to put full attention to the season. Leo Takahashi replaces Andy Maloney as flight controller, and Dubai will be the first reveal of how good the Kiwi outfit is for Season 5.

Only days before the Dubai regatta, the league’s 14th team was revealed with the SailGP’s original gangster Jimmy Spithill introducing the sailors of the Red Bull Italy SailGP Team. Spithill, while listed as an alternate helmsman, is leading the young team from the executive suite, leaving the driving of the team’s white F50 to double Olympic Gold Medalist Ruggero Tita. Australian wing trimmer extrordinaire Kyle Langford, was recruited away from the Aussie squad, and is joined by Alex Sinclair and grinders Matteo Celon and Enrico Voltolin. Giulia Fava, fresh of a win of the Puig Women’s America’s Cup with Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli is the team’s strategist, and Andrea Tesei is the starting flight controller.

The prize money is on the table, the past is in the past and the SailGP beast is about to be unleashed.

The post SailGP Season 5 Up For Grabs appeared first on Sailing World.