The week in racing - 24 August ‘26

The F50s found a new gear in Sassnitz, America's Cup's lawyers are still busy, and two new junior world champions emerged in Denmark – there's a lot to get through from the last seven days. Here's the rundown, plus what to watch out for next.

Sunday's Final in Sassnitz produced one of the stranger finishes of the season. Tom Slingsby's Flying Roos built such a lead that they'd stepped ashore for the trophy while NorthStar, Los Gallos and the Black Foils were still crawling towards the finish off the foils – a fifth win of the season for Australia, by three minutes nine seconds.

Saturday's headline act was DS Team France smashing SailGP's speed record – 107.63km/h (58.1 knots) in the final race of the day, well clear of the old 103.93km/h mark set by Rockwool Racing at the same venue last year. “I was definitely on the edge and it was quite scary on that last bear-away,” said driver Quentin Delapierre. “I was just focusing on not putting too much pressure on the foil. At this speed, the first boundary comes up very quickly!”

Makes you wonder if an AC75 will ever top that speed; the Cup's fastest pace on record is still 55.6 knots (102.97km/h), set by Ineos Britannia in Barcelona.

Watch The Foil's breakdown of the finale here:

Speaking of Britannia – well, we still don't know who really owns it. New court documents published on 18 August, as part of Athena Racing's amended Defence in the ongoing ownership battle, reveal the fate of a peace offer that could have avoided all this. Back in April, Ben Ainslie wrote to Ineos asking them to let Athena keep the disputed AC75 and other 2024 assets to compete in AC38. Athena initially told the court they'd had no reply.

The amended filing now says Ineos rejected the proposal outright, in a letter sent just nine days after Athena's original complaint about the silence. The actual contract between the two parties still hasn't been made public. Ineos has until 15 September to respond.

The America's Cup, meanwhile, turned 175 on Saturday. In all that time, only four nations have ever won it – proof just how hard it is to lift the oldest continually contested trophy in sport.

Brazil's Erik Scheidt – son of 5x Olympic medallist Robert – took the ILCA 6 Youth Worlds title in Aarhus, wrapping up the men's crown with a race to spare and a title and a title he was happy to put down to his father's influence. “My father is always by my side and helps me a lot with the psychological side,” said Scheidt. “I had some expectations coming into the championship, but I did not expect to win this week. In the end, I think consistency was the key.”

In the women's fleet, Greece's Hermionie Ghicas turned a one-point deficit into gold by sweeping all three races on the final day, denying Ireland's Sienna Wright. “I felt very comfortable on the boat with this wind and I'm very happy I managed to be strong both mentally, physically and tactically on the water,” said Ghicas after. Full results here.

Puerto Calero, Lanzarote hosts the fourth of five 2026 season regattas from Tuesday 25 to Saturday 29 August, with 13 teams back in the breeze for the second Lanzarote stop in as many months. Takashi Okura's Sled lead the circuit standings after winning the season's first two regattas, but a wobbly finish at Marina Rubicon has left the door open – Harm Müller-Spreer's Platoon Aviation trail by just 17 points and fancy closing the gap over the days ahead.

“We are sailing well, well enough to have won at Marina Rubicon if we had not torn five or six kites,” says Müller-Spreer. “And 17 points is nothing considering there should be 20 races left to sail this season. We believe we can still win the season title. That is our objective, to win the 2026 championship.”

One of the big stories of the season so far belongs to Jean-Luc Petithuguenin's Paprec, whose fairytale maiden win at Marina Rubicon – their first since joining the circuit back in 2012 – has the French crew riding a wave of confidence into Lanzarote. “We know where we are strong and where we are weak,” says Paprec mainsheet trimmer Stéphane Névé. “And if it is breezy again we can have a very strong event but now 50 per cent of the fleet can win a regatta. But now we know we can do it we will be working doubly hard.”

Andrea Lacorte's Alkedo, runners-up by just two points last time out, will be desperate to go one better. The Foil is streaming every race live on YouTube this week – tune in for five days of tight, tactical TP52 racing.

Dun Laoghaire, Ireland hosts the ILCA 7 Men's Worlds from Tuesday to Sunday, with 141 sailors from 45 countries fighting it out on Dublin Bay – the first time the venue's held an Olympic-class Worlds. Netherland’s defending champion Willem Wiersema is back, but the man to beat is Australia's Matt Wearn: after a perfect Grand Slam season – wins at Palma, Hyères and San Pedro – he arrives chasing a third world title. Just as the Flying Roos look unstoppable in SailGP, so does Wearn in the Laser.

“I think it's pretty obvious that Matt Wearn is number one, and maybe Micky Beckett and Elliot Hanson are number two and three at the moment, with Pavlos [Kontides] right in the mix,” says German sailor Philipp Buhl. “The thing is, in this class... every competitor gets a brand-new, identical boat – it's so simple and so amazing. Everybody is on exactly the same equipment, which means even Matt Wearn, having won every event he's competed in this year, still needs to show up and deliver in every single race, over the whole six days.” Track the results here.

Medemblik, Netherlands hosts the Star European Championship from Monday to Saturday, returning to the Dutch venue exactly 25 years after it staged the 2001 Star Worlds. It's a stacked fleet – 76 teams, over 20 countries, and 12 former Star World Champions among them. One to to watch is 3x Star World Champ Robert Scheidt, racing the week after his son Erik took the ILCA 6 Youth World title. The Europeans double as a key staging post for November's Star Worlds in Miami, where Frithjof Kleen (who's also racing in Medemblik this week) and Paul Cayard defend the Gold Star.