SailGP Team Italy

Olympic gold doesn't guarantee F50 speed, and Italy spent their debut season learning that lesson the expensive way. Built around 2x Olympic champion Ruggero Tita, partly bankrolled by Anne Hathaway and backed by one of the loudest brands in action sports, Red Bull Italy arrived as SailGP's most hyped expansion team since the league began. They left Season 5 sitting tenth out of 12 teams, one spot ahead of Brazil and miles behind the mid-pack respectability everyone assumed a Jimmy Spithill-led, Kyle Langford-trimmed, Red Bull-branded operation would deliver. The late season Phil Robertson signing – and his instant podium finish in Abu Dhabi – is quiet acknowledgement that Year 1 was a failure.

For much of Italy’s debut season, Tita's Olympic brilliance in the Nacra 17 – two golds, multiple world titles, supreme boat-handling in skiff-sized foilers – didn't translate to the chaos of 12-boat F50 starts at 50 knots. Auckland offered the cruelest snapshot: the Italians running second in the fleet, looking genuinely fast for the first time, then copping a penalty for crossing out of bounds that dumped them to sixth and erased the weekend’s momentum. Portsmouth delivered a decent result – fifth overall – yet it still felt like underlining mediocrity rather than a breakthrough. Cádiz was another hard lesson at the back of the fleet, with the crew struggling to get to grips with the four-person configuration necessary in light winds.

Robertson's arrival in Abu Dhabi flipped the narrative instantly. The Kiwi helmsman – who's driven for Canada, Spain and China, proven across formats and teams – took over for the finale and delivered second place, Red Bull Italy's first-ever podium. It was evidence that the problem may not have been the infrastructure or the crew, but the learning curve at the wheel. Robertson brings the kind of battle-hardened F50 experience that Tita (who remains on the team as reserve) was still trying to pick up during his rookie campaign.

Red Bull Italy enter Season 6 as SailGP's Hollywood-backed rookies on a second take – a team with money, profile and serious people in charge, determined to turn a bruising debut season into regular finals and a realistic threat to the established front-runners. Their Abu Dhabi podium suggests the pieces could be clicking into place.