The week in racing - 22 June ‘26

A world title decided by two points in Sardinia, a maxi charging into Bermuda under the cover of darkness, and SailGP's first-ever four-boat final going right down to the wire. It's been a full-on week of racing, and there’s plenty more coming…

Sled are world champions again, and they had to scrap for it to the very end. Takashi Okura's international crew – steered by Italy's Francesco Bruni with six-time America's Cup winner Murray Jones reading the racecourse – came into the final day in a five- or six-way battle for the title, with everything riding on a single decisive race in Porto Cervo. They held their nerve, pushing the risk a fraction harder off the line to get on top of their main rivals up the first beat and never letting go. Sweden's Trinity Racing, remarkably only at their second-ever TP52 regatta, won the race itself to take second overall, but Sled stayed close enough to lift the title by two clean points. It was a margin earned across a week of fiddly light sea breezes and flat water that left 15 evenly matched boats from 11 nations rarely more than a place or two apart.

For team manager and mainsheet trimmer Don Cowie, it came down to timing. “I think in that last race we finally started well when it really counted,” he said, admitting the crew's starts had been patchy all week in the trickier light air. He puts the team's resilience down to a calm boat: “We calm each other down if it gets a little heated… and we all respect each other's roles.”

There was heartbreak for Hong Kong's Alpha Plu, who led into that final race by a single point only to get pinned on the wrong side, rolled by Paprec and shuffled back to fourth. “It is so tough in this fleet and everyone pushes so hard. We’re proud of how we sailed this week – if at the end of the first day you said we would finish in fourth we'd have taken that, but right now it hurts,” said Luke Van Der Kamp.

Germany's Platoon Aviation took the last podium step. For Sled it's a third straight win in these waters, a third 52 Super Series regatta on the bounce, and a second world title after their 2021 success in Palma. Sled also top the season leaderboard, 15 points clear of Platoon Aviation after two events, with Italy's Alkedo Vitamina third. Full results here.

After leaving Newport on Friday, the fleet of nearly 150 boats was hustled south on a fast, almost entirely downwind run, and less than a day and a half later – in the small hours of Sunday morning, under cover of darkness – Tristan LeBrun's Black Jack 100 swept across the line beneath St David's Lighthouse to take line honours in the 54th 'Thrash to the Onion Patch'.

Better still for the maxi, owned by Remon Vos and co-skippered by Jelmer van Beek, Black Jack also claimed the overall corrected-time victory, the double every crew is after. Her elapsed time of one day, 11 hours, 26 minutes and 46 seconds had looked, for much of the race, like it might topple Comanche's decade-old monohull record, but the breeze softened over the final four hours and left them 48 minutes shy.

LeBrun – whose team is on a bit of a roll – wasn't dwelling on it. “Records like this are there to be broken, especially when you come so close,” he said, “but you have to deal with the conditions you're given, and we did that very well.” Sailing on the tail of a tropical storm, the crew rode an average of 20 knots and held a single starboard tack for almost the entire course – and with most of the team making their Bermuda debut, van Beek rightly called the double result “a real highlight”. Champagne and the customary Dark 'n Stormies were waiting on the dock; Space Monkey, Denali 4, OC 86 and Il Mostro followed across on Sunday. Track the fleet here.

At long last, Los Gallos turned a final into a win. Diego Botín's Spanish team, on one of the oldest boats in the fleet, clawed up from the back of SailGP's first-ever four-boat final to deny Nathan Outteridge's Artemis. “It's been a long time coming,” said Botín, who called it a high-risk afternoon that “paid off… it means everything to us.” Outteridge, agonisingly close to his first-ever event win with the Swedish team, was quick to credit the winners: “We almost got there… but they did a fantastic job on the last run just to hold us off.”

Sébastien Schneiter's Explora Swiss took third for their first podium of the season, pipping Tom Slingsby's Bonds Flying Roos and ending the Aussies' bid for a fourth straight win. Peter Burling's Black Foils finished fifth and finally banking some points, after a bold match-racing move to bundle Spain backwards and sneak into the final fell short by half a metre. Emirates GBR's wretched run continued with a warm-up nosedive that wrecked the wingsail and ended their day before it began. Plenty to talk about, so make sure to tune in to this week's podcast. Full race report here.

Kiel Week, running from 20-28 June, marks the fourth Sailing Grand Slam stop of the year. It has drawn close to 500 sailors from 58 nations across the six Olympic disciplines, among them 19 reigning World or European champions, with the ILCA-7 fleet alone topping 130 boats and the 49ers pushing 100.

Among the German 49er crews there's a home subplot simmering, with only one of two strong duos able to claim the country's single Olympic ticket: season-opening Princess Sofia Trophy winners Richard Schultheis and Fabian Rieger up against the vastly experienced Jakob Meggendorfer and Andreas Spranger. Rieger clearly relishes the rivalry, and reckons the pairing of “a hungry helmsman and my experience worked right away”. Check the results for all six fleets here.

There's plenty happening around the Olympic classes, too. The Flying Dutchman fleet contests its own World Championship from Wednesday, with the entire 2025 podium back and Hanover's Kilian König and Johannes Brack defending, while 162 junior crews treat the 29er Eurocup as a dress rehearsal for their own Worlds at the same venue straight after. All of it unfolds against the backdrop of Kiel's pitch to host the sailing should Germany ever land a future Games.

Out in Tangier, Morocco, the Optimist Worlds are running from 18-28 June with the final on Sunday. Nearly 300 of the world's best young sailors – split across four colour-coded fleets – are battling it out off the Moroccan coast. Day one opened gently in 7-8 knots before building towards 20, and yesterday served up a harder test still: a long wait ashore for the sea breeze to fill, then a north-easterly piping up to 22-24 knots over a short, choppy, demanding course.

Turkey's Cengiz Eren Güvenç has set the pace so far, banking two bullets on the opening day and clinging to the overall lead after four races, though the margins are wafer-thin, with barely three points covering the top three: Italy's Andrea Demurtas and Brazil's Arthur Lamin are in hot pursuit, with Portugal's Guilherme Costa and Malta's Andrei Zhakov rounding out the top five. Check standings here.

The Round Ireland Race set off from Wicklow on Saturday afternoon, and the 53-boat fleet was treated to picture-postcard conditions, with crowds lining the piers and headlands under blue skies. As predicted, though, the wind faded away overnight, leaving boats drifting in the flood tide, several anchored, a few fired up engines to dodge obstacles. “We had an interesting night; at one point we had to anchor to not lose any ground,” reported #EMPOWHER skipper Pamela Lee, who wasn't complaining about gliding past the beaches and “lovely green colours.” With the overall settled on IRC corrected time, Outrajeous, skippered by John Murphy, currently leads the handicap as the frontrunners head into the Atlantic stage. Track the fleet here.

The Youth Match Racing World Championships are running in Middelfart, Denmark, from 21-25 June. Twelve crews from 11 nations are scrapping it out on the tricky, current-swept Little Belt, with a champion crowned on Thursday. World number one Ethan Fong of New Zealand arrives as the man to beat but isn't taking anything for granted: “At a World Championship like this, anyone can win… the conditions are difficult to read.” Home hopes rest on Danish pair Mathias Rossing and Victor Melchior on familiar water. Check results here.

The 44Cup's high-performance owner-driver fleet makes its annual pilgrimage to Marstrand, on Sweden's rocky west coast, for round three of the season, with a practice day on Wednesday and racing proper running from Thursday 25 to Sunday 29 June. All eyes are on GeMera Racing, who lead the circuit and will carry the class's golden wheels – its own version of the yellow jersey – into the week. "It will be some responsibility, but we will try not to think about it," said tactician Francesco Bruni, who can hardly have unpacked his bags since lifting the TP52 title in Sardinia (above).

Aleph Racing sit a single point back, while defending Marstrand champion Team Nika arrive fresh from winning the last event in Puntaldia. Expect Marstrand to throw the lot at them. As Nika tactician Nic Asher put it, “Marstrand is different to the Med - you are up against the elements most of the time. You always get a day that's blown off, you always get some wind, some nasty waves and you can also get some light stuff. So it's tricky.” Check results as they come in here.

On the horizon: Foiling Week (27 June – 5 July) gets going on Lake Garda, and the GKSS Match Cup (28 June – 4 July) brings the World Match Racing Tour back to Marstrand. More on both next week.