SailGP: Australia wins all 4 races on final day of Rio Sail Grand Prix to take championship lead

Tom Slingsby steered Australia to victory in all four races in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday, launching the team to the top of the SailGP standings. Ricardo Pinto / Courtesy of SailGP Share full articleEditor’s note: 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. To win all four races on any day of a SailGP event would be remarkable. On the shifty, gusty, bumpy race course of Guanabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro, Australia claiming all four winning guns is extraordinary. Tom Slingsby steered the Bonds Flying Roos to an imperious victory Sunday at the Rio Sail Grand Prix, despite everything his rivals and the wildly variable conditions threw at him. As a result, the Australians ascended to the top of the championship standings after the fourth event of the 2026 season. Sweden briefly snatched the lead from Australia halfway through the three-boat final, but when Nathan Outteridge’s team failed to keep the Swedish fully on the hydrofoils through a soft patch of breeze, Slingsby squeezed past into the lead and sailed away to an easy victory. Spain closed the gap on the slow-moving Swedes to get a penalty against Outteridge, allowing Diego Botin to take second place in Rio, with Sweden forced to settle for third. Slingsby had to pinch himself after his team’s perfect performance. “Winning four races in a day, I don’t think it’s been done before,” the Australian skipper told The Athletic. “We’ve won three races in a day back in season one when there was only six boats or something like that. But to do it in a 12-boat fleet on such a challenging day, if you asked me today, ‘Were you going to get four firsts?’ I would say not a chance, I think we would have taken four fifth places today. But the team just gelled.” The British team’s exceptional run of form came crashing to a halt in Rio de Janeiro. After winning the 2025 season, Dylan Fletcher’s crew continued to set the pace in the first three events of the 2026 season with finishes of 1, 2, 2 in Perth, Auckland and Sydney. As good as things had been going, no one could have foreseen the spectacular fall from grace this weekend. The British had an awful start to the first race of Saturday before technical problems with their foils forced them to retire. Even when the gremlins had been resolved, there was no redemption for Fletcher, with the British boat crossing the finish line in last place in three of the remaining six fleet races. Fletcher hoped to right the wrongs of a decade ago at the Rio Games when he just missed out on an Olympic medal in the 49er skiff. Strategist Hannah Mills returned to the venue where she won Olympic gold in the women’s 470 at Rio 2016, but she could not replicate the same success on the tricky course. Fletcher couldn’t hide his disappointment but said this weekend’s setback would do little to affect team morale. “This weekend’s performance really was bad. I think that we were surprised — maybe not surprised, but we expected to be slightly better today.” Slingsby must have secretly enjoyed his rivals’ fall from grace, although he’s far too wise to let any such schadenfreude slip out in public. “It shows if you’re having an off week, you’re going to pay, and it’s a long season,” he told The Athletic. “These guys will be back. We all know that. They’ve got unbelievable talent on board. They’ve had a 1-2-2 in the first three events this year. But it just shows that you can have an off week — which we could at the next event — and the level’s so high. Even back in last place, there were gold medals on board that boat. The level is so high in SailGP that you’ve just got to always be ‘on.’ ” Everyone in SailGP knows just how critical the start can be. Yet the fleet is divided on how to approach the problem. Italy and the USA tend to book their place on the line early, which means they’ve grabbed their spot. But it leaves them vulnerable to the late-into-the-box opportunists like Sweden and France. Sunday produced high rewards and high penalties for the “Johnny-come-lately” teams. In the opening race of the afternoon, Australia made a tardy charge from the back, and scythed past their slow rivals and foiled to an early and unassailable lead. Australian strategist Tash Bryant told The Athletic: “It’s something that we knew was really high risk, but today was a venue that we thought would work really well if the gap appeared. So the whole way back into the start, we’re talking about where we think the gap is going to appear. We’re always ready to bail out if we have to. We know that’s the risk that comes with trying to do that type of start. But that gap appeared for us, and when it did, we went for it.” However, at the start of the sixth race, Australia’s strategy went badly wrong. “We thought we had a bigger gap than we did,” said Bryant of their subsequent coming together with the Swiss boat. “We were avoiding a boat to leeward. That pushed us into a boat to windward. So it was really tricky, but I think we did the best we could and minimized damage as much as we could.” When France went for a non-existent gap at the top of the start line in the final fleet race, Quentin Delapierre was slapped with more than the standard “stop-go” penalty. The French were disqualified for barging and forced to pull out of the race before the first turning mark. The late run into the line is a “win big, lose big” option, and not for the faint of heart. Even though Martine Grael’s team didn’t manage to deliver a stellar performance in front of the home crowd, the double Olympic Champion was still grinning from ear to ear after finishing ninth on the water. “I think our public really enjoys cheering for Brazil, and having a Brazilian team and SailGP here has definitely made something,” Grael told The Athletic. “Brazilians enjoy a bit of racing, like motor racing and Formula One; we have a big public outside of sailing that is watching SailGP as well and getting to understand SailGP. I always have good memories here, and I hope to put on a better show next year in Rio.” Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms