05/11/2026
by James Pacheco
If you’re a fan of the Rolex SailGP Championship, you’ll surely know by now how things unfolded on Sunday in Rio de Janeiro. If you’re not, you’re about to find out. And even if you were glued to the action, here’s a gentle reminder of what happened on a historic day, while we’re also about to give you an update on the latest odds to win the Championship.
Out of Season Australia Day
If you were to check the calendar, Australia Day was almost three months ago, January 26 to be precise, but in the world of SailGP, they might as well have branded Sunday, April 12, as Australia Day, such was the dominance of the BONDS Flying Roos SailGP Team throughout the afternoon.
Well, dominance is putting it lightly. Perfection would be a more appropriate word to use here.
As Tom Slingsby and his crew topped the standings going into Sunday’s races, in our recap of the action on Saturday, we wrote the following:
“If the odds-compilers are correct, the ones they all have to beat are the BONDS Flying Roos.
“Not only are they top of the standings after Race 4, but they’re also currently in second place in the Championship standings. And despite that late penalty in the day’s final race, there’s always that feeling out there in the water that Slingsby can pull a rabbit out of the hat when it matters most.
“They’re the justified 3.41 favorites to win the Rio event and be spraying the champagne come Sunday evening
“The Aussies are also just 1.16 to make that final, and also the 4.58 favorites to take Race 5.”
If you’d placed all three of those bets: the BONDS Flying Roos to win Race 5 at 4.58, to have made the final at 1.16, and to have won the final at 3.41, you would have won the lot.
The expression ‘Super Sunday’ is bandied about in plenty of other sports, but it’s hard to put into words just how hard it is to do what the Aussies did on Sunday: win three fleet races in a row and then nail the final as well.
For a bit of context, Saturday’s racing saw four different winners in each of the four races, and ironically, none of them was the BONDS Flying Roos.
But Tom Slingsby and his team saved the best for when it really mattered in what was truly a day to remember.
Rio Delight For BONDS Flying Roos, Rio Despair For Emirates Great Britain SailGP Team
It was all Australia this weekend in Rio de Janeiro, but at the other end of the scale, the Emirates Great Britain SailGP Team had a weekend to forget. The next event on the SailGP calendar, the Apex Group Bermuda Sail Grand Prix on the weekend of May 9-10, can’t come soon enough for them as they look to right the wrongs of Guanabara Bay.
A sixth-place finish in Race 2 was the best of a bad bunch of results for a team with sky-high standards, as they simply could not come to terms with the conditions over the weekend.
The result of the Rio event is that the BONDS Flying Roos are now top of the standings on 35 points, with Dylan Fletcher and co on 28 points.
The United States SailGP Team, which finished a very credible fourth after that superb win in Sydney, are on 27 points, and then it’s Los Gallos SailGP Team, runners-up in Rio, on 25.
Favorites For The Championship Have Flip-Flopped
The events in Rio have prompted bookies to rethink who will be crowned this year’s champions.
It was 2.32 on the Brits to win the Championship ahead of Rio and 2.38 on the Aussies, but the odds have since ‘flip-flopped’ and it’s now Slingsby and his team who are the favorites.
The latest odds have them at just 2.1 to go on and win the Championship, with Emirates GBR 3.0, the Americans at 5.0, and Los Gallos at 11.2.
All that said, the phrase ‘anything can happen in SailGP’ was used a few times before and during the action in Rio, so if one team can win four races in one day, then anything can happen as regards the bigger picture.
Tom Slingsby is in the driving seat in more ways than one, but it is certainly not over yet.
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