The Foil Weekly Wrap - 13 April '26

A clean sweep in Rio, a teenager crowned European champion in Naples, and the Caribbean racing season winding down. Here's what's been happening in the sailing world this week…

Rio SailGP took centre stage this week – read Andy Rice's full breakdown here.

Tom Slingsby's Bonds Flying Roos didn't actually win a single race on Saturday, yet still found themselves leading the overnight leaderboard. And then Sunday happened. Four races, four wins, including the final – a statistical anomaly on a course as tricky and variable as Guanabara Bay.

For Artemis Sweden, led by Nathan Outteridge, the weekend marked a milestone: their first final as a new team this season. They briefly held the lead in that winner-takes-all race before a tack cost them speed and a penalty for fouling Spain ended their chances, but third place in Rio underlines that this Swedish project is heading in the right direction.

At the other end of the spectrum, Emirates GBR had an absolute shocker. Dylan Fletcher's crew came into Rio as championship leaders and left with precisely zero points to show for their efforts – four last-place finishes out of seven races. It was the first three-boat final they've missed since Geneva last September. Whatever went wrong, they now trail Australia by seven points in the overall standings.

Check The Foil’s full race report and results.

Away from racing, there's been plenty happening in SailGP Land too. Israeli billionaire Idan Ofer has acquired Los Gallos, the Spanish team, through his company Quantum Pacific – another step towards SailGP's original goal of having all teams privately owned. The price wasn't disclosed, but is likely in the region of the $60 million Doug DeVos paid for Denmark back in February.

New Zealand's Black Foils, meanwhile, are working with the league towards their return to racing after the Auckland collision. An entirely new F50 needs to be built from scratch at SailGP Technologies in Southampton – the salvageable parts from Amokura were already used to repair France's boat – and that takes time. The timeline remains dependent on production schedules and the logistics of shipping the new boat to wherever they rejoin the circuit, but we've been promised a clearer picture now that Rio is done.

And in legal news, the Delaware Court of Chancery denied the US SailGP Team's request for a temporary restraining order against American Magic using their name and branding on the Danish operation – which meant the stars and stripes were proudly displayed on Rockwool Racing's kit in Rio this weekend. American Magic welcomed the ruling, saying they were "grateful for the speed and clarity of the court's decision" and that representing Denmark on the SailGP stage supports "the growth of the most exciting sailing competition in the sport." So that particular spat appears to be settled (for now).

Over in Naples, France claimed a clean sweep at the Formula Wing European Championships, with both the men's and women's titles going to French riders in what turned out to be a week of testing conditions beneath Mount Vesuvius.

The standout story was 16-year-old Vaina Picot. The rider from Guadeloupe dominated the women's fleet, winning nine of twelve races to become the youngest Formula Wing European champion. The tricky, shifty conditions suited her adaptability perfectly, and while Maddalena Spanu of Italy fought hard, the defending champion had to settle for silver.

In the men's fleet, Julien Rattotti delivered on a winter of focused preparation. The Frenchman was almost exclusively inside the top two throughout the week and adds the European title to his Wave world crown. Home favourite Ernesto de Amicis, a 17-year-old Naples sports ambassador, claimed silver for Italy in front of a proud local crowd.

The final day brought its own drama – or rather, the absence of it. A stubborn north-easterly prevented the usual Neapolitan thermal from developing, forcing race officials to progressively abandon racing and confirm the existing leaderboard as final.

France's dominance was underlined by bronze medals for Thomas Proust and Kylie Belloeuvre, giving the nation four medals in total. The international wingfoiling circuit returns to Italy in early July for the Wingfoil Racing World Cup in Calabria.

Full results here.

The Caribbean racing season is drawing to a close, with the Antigua Racing Cup running through Saturday from Nelson's Dockyard. It's been a week of quintessentially Antiguan conditions – rain squalls rolling through, sunshine breaking between clouds, and a breeze that couldn't make up its mind.

The big boat class, CSA 1, saw Dan Gribble's Tripp 65 Prevail take line honours on a 22-mile course that wound past Shirley Heights, out to a mark five miles offshore, and back inside Cades Reef. But the real drama sat in CSA 2, where Steve Rigby's GS46 Belladonna and the local RP37 Warthog went into the final day locked on equal points. Different boats with different strengths – Belladonna needing breeze to punch through waves, Warthog wanting big downwind conditions to extend – but nothing separating them on the leaderboard.

In CSA 3, Poul Hoj Jensen's Danish Blue tightened her grip with yet more race wins, while the regatta's community spirit showed in the Y2K programme encouraging young Antiguan sailors into keelboat racing. As one 19-year-old bowman put it: racing alongside legends on home waters makes you want to do your job better every single time.

Full results here.

The M32 Miami Winter Series reaches its conclusion this weekend (17–19 April), and the season finale promises a proper family dust-up. After three events, Miles Julien's Youngblood leads the overall standings with 43 points, propelled by a January win and back-to-back runner-up finishes. But his younger brother Charlie is breathing down his neck – Rated X sits second on 40 points after taking the March event with a disciplined run of top-three finishes.

It's becoming one of the defining storylines of the circuit: Julien versus Julien. Last season, the roles were reversed – Rated X claimed the Newport Summer Series while Youngblood finished mid-fleet. This winter, it's Charlie chasing Miles.

Behind the brothers, Ryan McKillen's Surge – the reigning world champions – remain in the hunt, while Biscayne Bay's variable conditions could throw up opportunities for dark horses. The March event saw weather wreaks havoc, with racing cancelled on two of three days and only five light-air races completed on a single Saturday window. If April delivers more stable conditions, the fleet might finally get the sustained racing needed to settle this sibling rivalry properly.

It's only been a couple of weeks since the Trofeo Princesa Sofía wrapped up in Palma, and the Olympic sailing circus is already packing its bags for the second Sailing Grand Slam event of the season: the Semaine Olympique Française in Hyères, running from 18–25 April.

The Bay of Hyères is renowned for testing conditions, and after Palma we have a clearer picture of who's in form heading into France. Matt Wearn's return to dinghy racing has gone about as well as his rivals feared – the double Olympic champion shook off the rust to win the ILCA 7 in Palma, and he'll be chasing a third consecutive Olympic title come LA 2028. Micky Beckett, who was denied a fifth straight Sofía title, will be hungry to hit back. Sweden's Emil Järudd and Hanna Jonsson arrive as Palma's overall winners after a dominant Nacra 17 performance, though John Gimson and Anna Burnet salvaged bronze and won't have given up on catching them.

The format may deliver different results too. Hyères offers its own character, and sailors who struggled with Palma's conditions may find the French waters more to their liking. Ireland's Eve McMahon, who won the ILCA 6 in Palma by a single point, will look to back it up, while kitefoiler Max Maeder extended his remarkable run to four consecutive Sofía titles and shows no sign of slowing down.