The Foil Weekly Wrap - 4 May '26

It's been a busy week off the water... Court documents have peeled back the cover on the Ineos v Athena dispute, the Australian AC38 challenge all but slipped out into the open, and Paul Cayard adds another prize to a year already loaded with accolades. Then the racing comes at you thick and fast: SailGP's return to Bermuda, the Formula Kite Worlds, the Etchells Worlds and the 52 Super Series all kicking off in the next seven days.

The Ratcliffe v Ainslie split has finally arrived in court, and the paperwork makes for grim reading. Documents lodged in the Commercial division of the High Court of England and Wales lay out how Ineos Racing sees its case against Athena Racing – the team Ainslie now leads as Challenger of Record for AC38. In three bullets, here's the story:

• The fallout. Ineos bankrolled Britain's AC37 campaign to the tune of roughly £174 million. Ratcliffe sacked Ainslie in early 2025, then Ineos walked away from AC38 entirely. Ainslie's team, rebranded as Athena, picked up fresh backing from private equity firm Oakley Capital last December and pressed on as Challenger of Record.
• The boat at the centre of it. Most of the fight is about the AC75 Britannia – Britain's most successful Cup boat ever, and the first British yacht to win the Louis Vuitton Cup. Now renamed GB1, it's the platform Athena is modifying for AC38. Ineos wants it back, along with the test boat T6, chase boats, equipment, and the prefab warehouse that served as the Barcelona base.
• The fight itself. Ineos says the deal always meant everything reverted to them once the campaign ended, for no payment. Athena says that handover only kicked in if the team wound down – which, with Oakley on board, it didn't. The High Court has now been asked to settle it.

For now, only one side of the story is on the public record. Athena's defence and counter-claim haven't been filed yet, and until they are it's hard to read what impact, if any, this will have on the team's ability to race in the pre-regattas or the Cup itself. The team's line is business as usual – which it'll need to be, with the first event in Cagliari less than three weeks away. We'll bring you a fuller breakdown of the legal proceedings later this week.

The Black Foils' wait to get back on the racetrack is confirmed to stretch beyond the Sail Grands Prix of Bermuda (9-10 May) and New York (30-31 May). Halifax on 21-22 June is the clearest target for a return, the first event after the May double-header, and one the team is pushing to make.

Co-CEO and driver Peter Burling says they want to be back as soon as possible, but acknowledges the build programme and logistics the league is juggling. “Huge strides have been made by the league in building resilience in the fleet with SailGP Technologies,” he said, with Kiwi shore crew rotating into Southampton over the next fortnight to help the effort.

Meanwhile Kiwi strategist Liv Mackay continues her loan stint with France in Bermuda, holding the fort for the still-recovering Manon Audinet, and banking valuable race time of her own while she's at it.

It's been the worst-kept secret in the America's Cup paddock, and now it’s leaked. On the official America’s Cup website, Dave Endean, team director at Alinghi, was explaining his team's confirmed design link with GB1 when he mentioned in passing that Emirates Team New Zealand have a similar arrangement with the French – “and probably with the Australians as well now.” The line has since been scrubbed from the article. Too late.

An Australian challenge finally gives a generation of talent, raised in the wake of 2000's Young Australia campaign, a flag of their own to fight under after years of winning under someone else's. Now the question is who fronts it. We'll bring you the latest as and when we know more.

AC38 is really starting to come into focus. Australia all but confirmed as the seventh challenger, Giles Scott appointed sailing director at Team USA, and now the host city itself finally stirring into life. From 1 June, the first team representatives will arrive in Naples for reconnaissance and testing at Bagnoli, the chosen home of the AC village.

The catch is that Bagnoli isn't ready yet. Landfill safety work is due to wrap by October, hangar construction is not scheduled to begin until September or October, and the port and reefs remain unfinished, with dredging in progress. Not to mention the protests from locals over the development of the site itself.

The first of three pre-regattas is just weeks away, from 21-24 May in Cagliari, with Naples pencilled in as venue number two this summer. Exact dates to be confirmed.

It’s the year that keeps on giving for Paul Cayard, who has been named winner of the 2026 Magnus Olsson Prize, capping a run that already included a second Star Worlds title in Split last September – 37 years after his first – a second Rolex Yachtsman of the Year award in December, induction into the America's Cup Hall of Fame in October, and two months ago, the long-elusive Bacardi Cup at its 99th edition in Miami.

His career is hard to summarise in a single paragraph. Eight world titles. Two Olympics in 1984 and 2004 – twenty years apart, which is its own small miracle. Seven America's Cups, including skippering Il Moro di Venezia to the 1992 Louis Vuitton Cup. And the 1997-98 Whitbread Round the World Race aboard EF Language, where he became the first American skipper to win the event. Off the water, leadership roles across teams, class associations and US Olympic Sailing.

The prize is awarded in memory of Magnus Olsson, the Swedish offshore great who died during the 2014-15 Volvo Ocean Race – and a man Cayard raced with through the Whitbread and Volvo eras. The ceremony takes place in Stockholm on 9 June.

The International Switch Class is throwing its weight behind a Swedish Sailing Federation proposal to put a single-handed foiling dinghy event into the Olympic programme. Submitted under World Sailing Regulation 11.5 – a long, contested process worth tempering expectations against – the bid pitches short, dynamic racing for both women and men.

The Switch makes a decent case for itself. More than 200 boats across 20-plus countries, a one-design platform, and a modular design that lets you fit 20-something hulls into a 20ft container – or, with the class's charter system, fly out with your rigs and foils and pick up a hull at the venue. It sits inside a wider foiling-dinghy ecosystem that already runs from the Waszp at grassroots level up to the Moth at the high end, both proven pipelines into the America's Cup and SailGP.

Whether World Sailing buys in is another matter, but at the very least it puts single-handed foiling in the conversation for the next Olympic cycle.

There was a shock waiting in Long Beach. Cole Tapper and his all-CYCA crew – Max Brennan, Jack Frewin, Nathan Gulliksen, George Richardson and Hamish Vass – saw off defending champion Eric Monnin 3–0 in the final to take the 2026 Congressional Cup.

It's only the second Australian win in the event's 61-year history, and the first since Peter Gilmour did it in 1988. The path through wasn't smooth either: Tapper's crew came back from 2–0 down in the semis to take three straight.

READ MORE: The Defining Moments: Tapper dominates debut Congressional Cup final to secure first Crimson Blazer

Sweden took the 29er EuroCup at Fraglia Vela Malcesine on Lake Garda, with Henric Wigforss and William Drakenberg winning the three-day regatta. Germany's Lukas Wagner and Valentin Ziegler finished second, while France's Alexandre Mostini and Raphaël Allain took third. Full results here.

SailGP is back on the Great Sound this weekend for the Bermuda Sail Grand Prix (9-10 May), the F50 fleet's fourth visit to a venue that rarely lets a season pass without leaving its mark on the standings.

There'll be plenty of coverage on The Foil through the week, with our team reporting from Bermuda itself. Stick around for more.

Le Défi Wind rolls into Gruissan on France's Mediterranean coast for its 24th edition, with three back-to-back disciplines stacked into ten days of racing: kite first (8-10 May), wing next (11-13 May), then the original windsurf group itself (14-17 May).

The format includes a 40km Marathon of the Seas, hundreds lining up on a single start line, pros and amateurs all chasing the same Tramontane breeze the area is known for. Around 1,500 windsurfers showed up in 2025, aged 13 to 76, hence the ‘Woodstock of windsurfing’ tag. There aren't many sailing events like it.

The Formula Kite World Championships kick off in Viana do Castelo on Saturday, and on current form, both fleets have a clear front-runner heading in. Singapore's Max Maeder and France's Lauriane Nolot have each taken back-to-back wins at the first two Sailing Grand Slams of 2026, and arrive on the Portuguese coast looking dangerous. Running from 9-16 May.

The 2026 Etchells Worlds kick off in San Diego on Friday and run through to 15 May, hosted by San Diego Yacht Club across nine days of racing on San Diego Bay and the open Pacific. The Worlds tends to pull in Olympians, America's Cup hands and grand prix regulars in equal measure – check the entry list here.

The 52 Super Series opens its 15th season today in Puerto Portals (4-9 May) with three new entries on the line: Pieter Heerema's No Way Back – the 2025 Quantum Racing championship-winning boat, complete with Terry Hutchinson on tactics – Joakim Sundberg's brand-new Botín-designed Trinity, and Brazil's Caballo Loco. The Foil's own Freddie Carr is racing aboard British boat Gladiator with Tony Langley.

READ MORE: Freddie Carr: The authentic grand prix class I just can't get enough of

May the fourth be with you.