{"id":1165524,"date":"2026-08-23T22:07:20","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T22:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1165524\/"},"modified":"2026-08-23T22:07:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T22:07:20","slug":"germany-sailgp-australia-comes-out-on-top-after-wild-and-wacky-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1165524\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany SailGP: Australia comes out on top after wild and wacky weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s note:<\/strong>\u00a0This story is part of\u00a0The Athletic\u2019s coverage of SailGP, an international sailing competition that has been likened to Formula 1 on water. Follow SailGP\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

SASSNITZ, Germany \u2014 Fluky as the concluding day of Germany Sail Grand Prix might have been, through all the gusts, lulls, flat calms and rain squalls, the Australians fought through to claim their fifth event in nine this season.<\/p>\n

Fast starts in SailGP are as crucial as grabbing pole position in motorsport. Tom Slingsby seized the initiative out of the line against Australia\u2019s three rivals \u2014 Canada, New Zealand and the laggardly Spanish, who were slow to get rolling. Australia extended its advantage around the two-lap race track and foiled at good speed across the finish line to take the winner\u2019s gun and $400,000 prize money.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the breeze evaporated behind the Australians, leaving the remaining three F50s almost stranded on the race course. They were caught in a side-by-side, slo-mo drift to the finish, barely moving through the water. By the time they crossed the finish line \u2014 Canada, Spain and New Zealand in that order \u2014 Slingsby and his grinning Flying Roos had stepped off the boat, been ferried ashore, scaled the steps of the podium and cracked open the champagne.<\/p>\n

Slingsby told The Athletic: \u201cIt was a bit of a weird feeling. We were on the podium before the other teams had even finished, which I don\u2019t think has ever been done before. Sometimes the wind just shuts down, and we managed to sneak through the finish line while the other teams were still finishing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did have a little giggle about that,\u201d Aussie strategist Tash Bryant told The Athletic. \u201cWe were standing on the shore, trying to figure out who\u2019d finished second, third and fourth. It\u2019s a pretty cool feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a wild and wacky weekend in Sassnitz, but this quirky, backwater venue in northern Germany has shaken off the unwanted nickname from a year ago. No more Crashnitz or Smashnitz<\/a>, because 13 boats started the weekend and all 13 finished with no major incident.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what we learned from racing in Sassnitz.<\/p>\n

\"Australia<\/p>\n

\n Australia crosses the finish line to win the final race of the Germany SailGP. (Andrew Baker for SailGP)<\/p>\n

Slo-mo nailbiter<\/p>\n

After Australia\u2019s win in the four-boat final, what was it like to be in the fight to be the best of the rest?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a bit of a weird way to end a final, with an 18-meter wing package (designed for strong winds) in 8 kph (5 mph) of breeze with three boats racked up like that,\u201d Canada\u2019s driver, Giles Scott, told The Athletic. \u201cBut we got on the right side of it, sneaked in around the mark, and took the option to try to sail high to the finish because there was a tiny little puff rolling off the wall (near the stadiums).<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Spanish decided to soak low (steer away from the direction of the wind) early, got a bit stalled and opened the door for us,\u201d Scott continued. \u201cThat moment defined the result, but before that, we were sailing the boat really well. Today, we\u2019ve got a lot to be proud of. Yesterday, we came ashore feeling not quite on top of it, whereas today, right from the outset of the warmup, we were locked in and feeling good. It\u2019s nice that it translated into a good result.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a lackluster start to the season, the Canadians are just 6 points off fourth place, the cutoff for making the grand final in Abu Dhabi this November, where the winner of the last race will take home $2 million.<\/p>\n

Wingscreen wipers<\/p>\n

Not only was the rain playing havoc with visibility on the race course, but it seemed to be affecting the electronics on board some of the F50s. Peter Burling, having driven New Zealand to its first final of the season, found some of the electronics had deserted him for the all-important start of the final race.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a few system problems on board in that last race, which made our life pretty hard,\u201d he told The Athletic. \u201cWe had a little shutdown on the race screens, and sailing with little visibility (because of the rain) made life a little hard. But the coaches (from the shore) did a good job of feeding the information that we needed, and that kept us in the hunt.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a similar story of flying by the seat of their pants on the Spanish boat, as skipper Diego Botin told The Athletic. \u201cIn the Grand Final, there was massive rain, and it was very hard to see outside,\u201d he said. \u201cOur starting strategy got crazy. We had no wind data, just the boundaries and our timings for the start, and we basically got lost and were sailing blind.\u201d<\/p>\n

The inside-out race<\/p>\n

In its first group race of the day, Australia took an early lead after a good start. But when the wind died, all bets were off. The race turned into a drift-off, and Australia, along with Great Britain, was left stranded as other boats sailed around them, notably the German team. Dylan Fletcher was gutted to have missed an opportunity to get Britain into the final.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, it\u2019s pretty tough to take,\u201d he told The Athletic. \u201cI felt like we sailed quite well, but in that race, things turned a little inside out. The Germans behind us looked like they were going to sail into no wind, and the Aussies tacked out to the right for more pressure and got it completely wrong. It turned out you needed to sail into what looked like an absolute mirror. That kind of summed up the day for us; we kept getting on the wrong side of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Where Fletcher had looked into the mirror and didn\u2019t like what he saw, Germany\u2019s strategist Anna Barth saw opportunity. \u201cI actually saw something on the left,\u201d she told The Athletic. \u201cI saw the Brits and Australia tacking out, and while the closest pressure was on the right side, there was something coming from where the spectator boats were on the left. It had to be a quick decision, but I called that pressure. Erik (Kosegarten-Heil, Germany\u2019s driver) saw it as well; we went there, and it turned our way.\u201d<\/p>\n

It turned their way big-time, as Germany popped up on the foils, leaving its rivals stranded in its wake and wowing the home crowd by finishing almost half a mile ahead.<\/p>\n

Russell Coutts, CEO of SailGP as well as an Olympic gold medalist and five-time America\u2019s Cup winner, was delighted to see the Germans win a race Saturday and do it again Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the breeze dropped in the rain, it looked like a gust from a distance, but it came right past the windward mark, so I knew it was rain and not a gust,\u201d he told The Athletic. \u201cYou could see the flags (on the spectator boats) starting to move. Maybe that\u2019s why the Germans carried on while Britain and Australia tacked away in that drift-off. The Germans might have gotten a bit lucky, but you could see the flags on the outside. That was a great moment for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Less salt = more speed<\/p>\n

A year ago, the Danish team set a new F50 all-out speed of 56.1 knots (64.6 mph). Over the weekend, several teams broke the record, only to lose it a few minutes later to a rival. First Germany, then Brazil, then Great Britain all set the bar higher during Saturday\u2019s practice session. Then, in racing, the Danes regained their record \u2014 but only for a second, as the French went even faster in the same gust. Quentin Delapierre and the French drove the number to a new benchmark of 58.1 knots (66.9 mph), exactly 2 knots faster than the Danish record, which had stood for a year.<\/p>\n

Why were so many records broken in Sassnitz? According to Alex Reid, SailGP\u2019s head of technology, it\u2019s because of the low salinity and colder temperature of the water in the Baltic Sea. \u201cThe brackish water here allows the boats to travel at higher speeds,\u201d he told The Athletic. \u201cAnd the colder air temperature means the wind is more dense.\u201d Which also translates to more power through the wingsail. Sassnitz is becoming the undisputed high-speed track of the SailGP tour.<\/p>\n

There won\u2019t be much rest for the teams, as the SailGP bandwagon moves swiftly on to Valencia, Spain, for the next event on Sept. 5 and 6.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Editor\u2019s note:\u00a0This story is part of\u00a0The Athletic\u2019s coverage of SailGP, an international sailing competition that has been likened…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1165525,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2000,299,1824,6869,14995],"class_list":["post-1165524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-germany","tag-global-sports","tag-sailing"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1165524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1165525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1165524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1165524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1165524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}