{"id":46029,"date":"2026-09-07T05:59:41","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T05:59:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/46029\/"},"modified":"2026-09-07T05:59:41","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T05:59:41","slug":"sailgp-usa-snatches-win-in-valencia-final-italy-win-three-races-to-win-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/46029\/","title":{"rendered":"SailGP: USA snatches win in Valencia Final. Italy win three races to win Group."},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

SailGP: USA snatches win in Valencia Final. Italy win three races to win Group.
\n by Richard Gladwell, Sail-World NZ 6 Sep 14:07 UTC<\/p>\n


\n A very happy Anna Weis (USA) – Day 2 – Spain Sail Grand Prix – Valencia – September 6, 2026 \u00a9 Ricardo Pinto\/SailGP<\/p>\n

\"Henri-Lloyd
<\/a>\"Armstrong
<\/a><\/p>\n


\nLight winds held the trump card on the Final day of racing in Spain Sail Grand Prix, Valencia. \n<\/p>\n


\nThe start of racing was delayed by 25 minutes in what should have been two more qualifying races, as race managers waited for the breeze to settle and freshen. It did neither, peaking at 7.5kts, and often less, resulting in each Group only sailing one race of just four legs, including the sprint off the start and a short reach to the finish. \n<\/p>\n


\nThe shortened series meant that fancied teams who had got themselves buried in the mid-range or worse on the overnight leaderboard had little chance to recover and make the Final. \n<\/p>\n


\nOnce again, light winds and marginal foiling conditions played into the hands of the match racers, with the two top practitioners, Phil Robertson (Red Bull Italy) and Taylor Canfield (SailGP USA), topping their Group scores, and looked set to go head-to-head in the Final. \n<\/p>\n


\nHowever, Robertson was too early for the start of the Final and had to drop back to complete his penalty. \n<\/p>\n


\nHe fought back to make contact with the two leaders, Tom Slingsby (Bonds Flying Roos) and Taylor Canfield (USA), who swapped the lead going up the fourth leg of the Final. The final play came just short of the top mark as Canfield returned Slingsby’s play to the same place on the third leg. \n<\/p>\n


\nThis time it was Canfield who came in foiling on starboard tack, picked his moment to tack for the mark, just ahead of Slingsby on port and made the final mark with just enough lead to be able to defend on the reach to the finish line, with the Australian team crossing 11 seconds after the USA. \n<\/p>\n


\nThe Bonds Flying Roos finished just 5 seconds ahead of a fast-finishing Italian team. Woolrock Denmark was missing in action, unable to lock into the same zephyric breeze which occasionally flicked into foiling pressure. \n<\/p>\n


\nIn only Group Race of the day, Woolrock Denmark scrambled into fourth place – sufficient to get them onto equal points and then force the tiebreak against Los Gallos who led Group A after winning two races and finished second in the other. However they were masters of their own demise in the only Group race sailed on Day 2 recording 6th, and last place. \n<\/p>\n


\nAfter the high octane sailing of Sassnitz, teams will be undergoing introspection as to their light-air performance, with the League shifting to Geneva for Round 11, in less than a fortnight, and then Dubai followed by Abu Dhabi at the end of November. All three are expected to be light-weather venues, and there is $ 2 million in prize money for the winner of the Grand Final in Abu Dhabi. \n<\/p>\n


\nAs we have seen several times this season when the light airs click in, the match racers come to the fore. \n<\/p>\n


\nThis was again demonstrated in the closing stanzas of the Final in Valencia, where Taylor Canfield made the difficult call to sail high in displacement mode and head for the next mark, rather than cracking off and sailing across the course hoping to build sufficient speed to get foiling. The race statistics underlined the merit of the US call with Bonds Flying Roos topping the flight time percentage at 81.5%, but they could only manage second, and the tortoise beat the hare. \n<\/p>\n


\nFans were deprived of a great head-to-head battle between two former world match racing champions in the Final, however, a trigger-happy Italian crew misjudged the line approach and were recalled. However skipper Phil Robertson and friends threaded their way through the shifts approaching the final to round in contact with the Australian team, but had insufficient runway left on the final leg, to be able to relegate the Flying Roos to third place. \n<\/p>\n


\nUSA were the most consistent team in Group racing, and were the only team to finish in the top three in every race. \n<\/p>\n


\nSpeaking of their Final race win, Taylor Canfield (USA) remarked: “We knew we had what it took yesterday, and we came in today with a good plan and went out and executed. The pressure was on to make some moves in the final, and we did a great job handling the tactics. Everyone on board was spot-on, we\u2019re pumped.\u201d \n<\/p>\n


\n\u201cI\u2019d say we\u2019re more of an all-around team now, but we love these conditions,” he said of the team’s prowess in the light. “We feel very comfortable throwing the boat around and we\u2019re confident in our decisions. We\u2019re going to have a lot more of these conditions coming up. We\u2019re ready for them.\u201d \n<\/p>\n


\n\u201cIt\u2019s just about day by day still. We\u2019ve got to keep getting better and stick to our process.” \n<\/p>\n


\nMatch racing skills aside, Anna Weis is one of the USA team’s secret weapons. She’s a specialist grinder, which makes crew configuration decisions a lot more straightforward – when the crew reductions click in, and a choice has to be made in the trade-off between grinder power, and gender composition rules. \n<\/p>\n


\n\u201cAfter yesterday, I feel like the team sailed really solidly,” Weiss explained. “There are a few things that we needed to clean up because this fleet is so good. And so you have to do everything and make no mistakes to really be at the top.” \n<\/p>\n


\n\u201cWe worked really hard overnight to focus on a few things and we came out swinging today. And we\u2019re really happy to take the win here in Valencia.\u201d \n<\/p>\n


\nLocal team Los Gallos, led by 2024 Olympic Gold medalist Diego Botin (ESP), led their Group and should have been a certainty to make the Final, given their 4pt margin over USA who were in third place on the overnight leaderboard. \n<\/p>\n


\nHe, along with a grandstand full of hometown fans, was disappointed at how the final day panned out: \u201cWe were expecting a bit more breeze today here in Valencia, but it didn\u2019t turn on. Because of that, the race committee decided to do only one race before the final, which in hindsight was favoring us because we had a very healthy lead before that race.” \n<\/p>\n


\n\u201cBut we didn\u2019t execute a good start. We didn\u2019t manage to get into the front row and started behind. From there, we tried to make a couple of moves to pass some boats and, in the last half-wind, we needed to pass a boat to get just behind the Danes. \n<\/p>\n


\n\u201cWe made a move trying to foil and we couldn\u2019t, and we lost a lot of chances there. So yeah, a bit disappointed. Obviously, we wanted to win the final here in Valencia, especially after the great day we had yesterday. But we need to take the learnings and move forward.\u201d \n<\/p>\n


\n\u201cWe just had a bad race,” he said of finishing last in Race 4 of their Group. “The Danes and the Americans deserve to pass into the Final and we need to take the learnings. As I said, we need to use this hard moment to really dig deep and keep moving forward, especially in these light-air conditions.\u201d \n<\/p>\n


\nRed Bull Italy enjoyed the team\u2019s best-ever weekend. \n<\/p>\n


\n\u201cThis is for sure the best weekend that this team\u2019s had,” said skipper Phil Robertson after the final. “We finished P3 and won three out of the four races in our group, which is quite a tough ask. We\u2019ve been starting really, really well off the line, but in that final we broke the start line 0.2 seconds early and just ran out of a bit of space at that boat end. \n<\/p>\n


\n\u201cWe fought super hard and got back into that race and even had a shot at the win right at the end. I\u2019m really proud of the team. It\u2019s been a lot of hard work over the last few months. It\u2019s felt like there\u2019s been a lot of progress and we\u2019re taking big steps forward and closing the gap to the top teams. The results weren\u2019t coming, but now this is sort of validation that, yeah, we are making the right moves and doing the right thing.\u201d \n<\/p>\n


\nOn the team\u2019s three fleet race wins: \u201cA big focus for us from the last event to this one was starting. We put a lot of time and effort into it, looking at how we\u2019re going to execute the start and get off the line in different breeze conditions and configurations, not knowing what we were going to get here in Valencia. \n<\/p>\n


\n\u201cIt was a light-air starting event, which probably plays to my strength a bit. We call it \u2018elbows out\u2019 – you fight for your spot, you establish it and you fight hard to keep that spot on the line. We did a really good job of that over the weekend and managed P1 at Mark 1 three times, and that gets converted into a win. Happy days for the team.\u201d \n<\/p>\n


\nThe Flying Roos Tom Slingsby rued an expensive tactical choice they made in the Final, when leading. “95% of the final was good for us,” he said after the race. \n<\/p>\n


\n“We had a great start. We did make an error at the bottom of the first upwind going for the foil. We got on the foil, but we ended up fading into some right-hand pressure and the U.S. were able to overtake us. We were able to get them back pretty quickly.” \n<\/p>\n


\n\u201cAnd then that last bottom-mark gate decision, in hindsight, I look at it as an “own goal”. We should have taken the left turn there. If the boat behind is laying left turn, you\u2019ve got to take left turn. \n<\/p>\n


\n\u201cBut the left gate hadn\u2019t been very good throughout the day, and we were sort of saying, \u2018Do what we\u2019ve been doing all day,\u2019 which was right turn. We\u2019d been making gains all day. I\u2019m frustrated at that one for sure.\u201d \n<\/p>\n


\n\u201cWe just need to look at our comms going into that decision. We\u2019re already debriefing it, and it just felt like we weren\u2019t really discussing the situation properly. It felt like we weren\u2019t giving facts and then opinions. It was more opinions, opinions, and it wasn\u2019t structured enough.” \n<\/p>\n


\n\u201cI think we just need to look at the comms there, because the way we\u2019re sailing the boat is the best we\u2019ve ever sailed the boat. We\u2019re strong in light winds, we\u2019re strong in heavy winds, we just feel good everywhere. \n<\/p>\n


\n\u201cIt\u2019s just going to come down to sort of between-the-ears stuff, and our comms and communication is a big part of that.\u201d \n<\/p>\n


\nFor all their self-flagellation, the Australians can take some comfort that their second-place points give them a 30-point margin over Artemis Racing, the fourth-placed team on Season Points. \n<\/p>\n


\nThat margin is probably sufficient to enable Slingsby and friends to book a berth in the expected to be four-boat final in Abu Dhabi on November 29th. \n<\/p>\n


\nGroup Racing Points after Day 2 and four races completed: \n<\/p>\n


\nGroup A: USA 15pts; DEN 14pts; ESP 14pts; GER 7pts; CAN 5pts; FRA 5pts \n<\/p>\n


\nGroup B: ITA 15pts; AUS 12pts; GBR 11pts; SUI 8pts; SWE 6 pts; NZL 5pts; BRA 3pts \n<\/p>\n


\nFinal: USA 10pts; AUS 9pts; ITA 8pts; DEN 7pts; ESP 6pts; GBR 5pts; SUI 4pts; GER 3pts; SWE 2pts; CAN 1pt; NZL0pts; FRA 0pts; BRA 0pts
\n
\n
\n \n <\/p>\n

\"Sailingfast
<\/a>\"Zhik
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