The week in racing - 5 Oct ’26

It's been a busy old week, from Olympic qualification getting under way at the Asian Games to the giant Ultims touching the mid-40s off Brittany, with a double-handed offshore world title for France and the classics out in force in Saint-Tropez. Next up, the 52 Super Series heads to Valencia to settle its season, before more than 1,300 boats pile onto the start line in Trieste for the Barcolana.

The sailing at the Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya mattered more than usual this time, with the ILCA fleets handing out the very first sailing places for the LA 2028 Olympics. Nobody could keep up with Sophia Montgomery in the ILCA 6. The 23-year-old Thai-American closed out a windy final on just five points, eight clear of Singapore’s Jania Ang, while India’s Nethra Kumanan finally made the podium at her fourth Games, taking bronze on a tie-break.

In the ILCA 7, Jeemin Ha was untouchable in the final race and collected his fourth Asian Games gold at 37, ahead of Hong Kong’s Nicholas Halliday and Malaysia’s Khairulnizam Mohd Afendy. So Thailand and South Korea join host nation USA as the first countries booked in for LA, though strictly speaking the places belong to the NOCs rather than the sailors. In the skiffs, China's Liu Tian and Wen Zaiding defended their men’s 49er title, while Misaki Tanaka and Sera Nagamatsu took the women's 49erFX gold for Japan. Full results here.

The 24H ULTIM out of Lorient is billed as a dress rehearsal for the Route du Rhum at the start of November, but nobody seemed to have told the skippers to hold back. When the breeze filled in on the Friday evening, race control added 85 miles to both courses, and the four Ultims spent a moonlit night reaching across Biscay at 40+ knots.

Tom Laperche and SVR-Lazartigue retained the title, but it was tighter than the 10-minute margin suggests. Armel Le Cléac’h botched a tack into the first mark on Maxi Banque Populaire XI, then hauled himself past Anthony Marchand’s Actual Ultim 4 and back onto Laperche’s tail, only to run out of racecourse.

“With Maxi Banque Populaire XI, it was incredibly close,” said Laperche. “It’s well known, we battle right to the end! I changed sails at the end, so I lost a bit of ground. They’re fast, they’re right in the mix. Overall, it came down to almost nothing, to whoever finished tuning their boat best. You can feel that everyone is giving it their all.”

Basile Bourgnon also defended his Ocean Fifty crown, leading Edenred 5 from start to finish after a last-minute call to go north of Groix while the rest of the 11-boat fleet went inshore. Matthieu Perraut (Elvest) and Léonard Legrand (Sodebo Fifty) completed the podium.

“I am very happy with this second solo win of the year,” said Bourgnon. “I put a lot of intensity into it from the start and, once again, I never let up. I am not hiding my ambitions for the Route du Rhum, the goal is to win. This latest event confirms that with Edenred 5 we have the means to match our ambitions.” Full results here.

Pauline Courtois and her Match in Pink by Normandy Elite Team crew of Maëlenn Lemaitre, Louise Acker and Laurane Mettraux are women’s match racing world champions for a sixth year running, and on San Francisco Bay they dropped just one of their 20 matches in the J/22s.

The Bay didn’t deliver its usual blast – the AP flag was up on three of the four mornings – but the tides and swirling currents more than made up for it, and that was supposed to suit the locals. Nicole Breault’s Vela Racing duly reached the final on home waters, only for the French to sweep them 3–0, with Courtois crediting her crew for keeping the boat quick all week. “When you are faster, it’s easier,” she said. “I think that’s a really big part of match racing, and it’s a big team job.”

Julia Aartsen’s Out of the Box took bronze, the Dutch skipper’s best result yet. Full results here.

The Offshore Double Handed Worlds in Marseille came down to a 190-mile final race that threw just about everything at the crews – a 90-mile beat to Cannes into 20 knots and a lumpy sea, then a run home in a fading breeze. France’s Thomas Andre and Colombe Julia, both Figaro sailors who used to campaign a 470 together, led for most of the way, until Australia’s Annie Stevenson and Peter Winter crept inshore on the final morning and nicked the lead. The French hit back on the last leg from Planier, tucking in under the cliffs on the right-hand side to find the pressure they needed.

“It was so intense. Every time there was always something happening,” said Andre. “Upwind we were tacking every 10–15 minutes. We managed to take every lift from every headland. Then when it went light, Australia squeezed past us. They were fast. We thought that there would be no wind by the mountains, but there was wind and for Australia it was a shorter distance. Once we were back together, we knew we could match them.”

Behind them, Belgium’s Jonas Gerckens and Djemila Tassin took bronze in a photo finish, beating Uruguay’s Federico Waksman and Irina Gracheva by eight seconds – and a time penalty for the Uruguayans then dropped them behind the Dutch pair of Christine Walta and Simeon Tienpont, who had finished just 52 seconds back. Full results here.

Few regattas bring together as many eras of yacht design as Les Voiles, where gaff-rigged classics and carbon grand prix boats share the quayside before going toe-to-toe across 20 categories. The Rolex Trophy went to the P Class Olympian, which had to win the final race head-to-head against Chips to seal it. Sir Peter Ogden’s 77-footer Jethou won the last coastal race to break a tie with the Wallycento V and take the Maxi honours, while Svea won half its six races to top the J Class.

“The races are increasingly close,” said Svea tactician Tony Rey. “Our problem is that we have to keep slightly ahead of Rainbow and Hanuman, whilst continuing to up the ante as that will be key in future matches next season. Each new upwind or downwind leg in close contact with our rivals is a further opportunity to learn, even though we’ve been sailing together aboard Svea for years. That’s what prompted us to compete in Les Voiles!”

The TP52 Spirit of Lorina took the BMW Trophy among the moderns, the schooner Elena of London won the Big Boats, and a certain Jimmy Spithill steered Tuiga to Grand Tradition victory. Full results here.

Ferrari Hypersail has found somewhere to call home. The 100-foot foiling ocean monohull project is setting up its operational hub inside Azimut Yachts’ facility in Livorno, with offices, gyms and workshops for everything from hydraulics to 3D printing. The location ticks two big boxes: open water on the doorstep for a proper testing programme, and Maranello near enough to keep Ferrari’s engineers in the loop.

Project leader Enrico Voltolini said: “Being able to rely on such a strategic location on the Tyrrhenian Sea, valuable both for technical and athletic preparation and for sea trials, while remaining close to Maranello, provides us with the ideal conditions to further accelerate our innovation process.”

Construction is just getting going, with Azimut also building a custom Fly 72 tow boat to support the first flight tests. No dates yet, but you don’t build a base like this unless you’re in it for the long haul.

The 52 Super Series wraps up its season in Valencia this week (5–10 October, racing from Tuesday), and once again it’s all to play for. Harm Müller-Spreer’s Platoon Aviation arrives 11 points clear after winning in Lanzarote, but Takashi Okura’s Sled won the first two regattas of the year and only slipped behind thanks to a nine-point gear failure and some self-inflicted penalties.

“It is going to be a tight regatta – we have seen Platoon improve their performance dramatically over the last two or three events,” said Don Cowie of Sled. “They are tough competitors but we will go out swinging, giving it our very best shot, getting back those points and winning the season. I think we need to not give away silly penalties like we have and we had that gear failure which cost us nine points. We are not sailing as well as we were, we need to improve our starts and sail solid races.”

Alkedo Cetilar leads Paprec by 11 for third, with Swedish newcomers Trinity Racing a point further back. With a record 16 boats on the start line and Valencia’s autumn breeze capable of serving up anything, an 11-point lead is far from safe – after all, Quantum Racing won the 2024 title here by a single point in the very last race.

Down in Portimão, a record 222 sailors from 40 nations got racing today at the second World Sailing Inclusion Championships, which run until Saturday 10 October with medals in nine events. This is about as wide-ranging as a world championship gets, with sailors of every ability on the same course, from experienced international competitors to people who were learning the parts of a boat only a few months ago. One of those newcomers is Jamaica’s Andre Daley, who started sailing in June after a scuba diving accident in 2025. “When I’m out on the water, I feel free. It’s amazing. I’d love for more people to come and try.”

With America’s Cup backing, it’s also a shop window for World Sailing’s push to get sailing back into the Paralympics at Brisbane 2032.

The Switch Global Championship heads to Torbole at the top of Lake Garda from 8–11 October, with four days of racing on the one-design foiling dinghy building to Sunday’s finals. At the last count 57 sailors had entered, with at least ten more expected, and there are some serious names among them. Jordi Xammar, the Tokyo 470 bronze medallist who used to helm Spain’s SailGP F50, is there, as is Italian SailGP sailor Mattia Cesana, a Garda local. Olympic medallists Annalise Murphy and Simon Hiscocks line up alongside Paris Olympians Micky Beckett and Erika Reineke. If the Ora fills in as reliably as it usually does, it should be a proper shoot-out to find the quickest sailor on foils, wherever they’ve come from.

And finally, Trieste, where the 58th Barcolana has turned the city – and much of Friuli Venezia Giulia – into a ten-day festival, with more than 500 events and over 1,000 people involved in running it. There’s been plenty of racing in the build-up, from the 318 young sailors who tackled the Bora in the Barcolana Young Optimist regatta to the ten double-handed Figaro 3 crews due to finish the 1,500-mile Marina Militare Nastro Rosa Veloce from Genoa around 8 October. But it all leads to Sunday 11 October and the Coppa d’Autunno, the world’s biggest sailing race, where 1,364 boats (and counting) will share a single start line on the Gulf of Trieste.