SailGP: Australia atop tight leaderboard after Day 1 of Rio Sail Grand Prix

The German, Danish and Australian teams sail below Christ the Redeemer on the first race day of the Rio Sail Grand Prix in Rio de Janeiro. Jonathan Nackstrand / Courtesy of SailGP Share full articleEditor’s note: This story is part of The Athletic’s coverage of SailGP, an international sailing competition that has been likened to Formula 1 on water. Follow SailGP here. Of all the reasons a boat can’t start a race, who could have predicted that a “faulty modem” would be the thing that stopped the Brazilians from contesting the opening two races of the Rio Sail Grand Prix? Martine Grael, the driver of the Brazilian team, had been looking forward to this moment for a long time, to steer her high-tech foiling F50 catamaran across the start line in front of her hometown fans in Rio de Janeiro. But sometimes these F50s are too high-tech for their own good. Without a modem to transmit and receive all the data on and off the boat, it was impossible for the Brazilians to leave the dock early in Saturday’s competition. “That took one hour, forty to get sorted, and we lost the first two races,” Grael told The Athletic. “It was very frustrating sitting there. We couldn’t even tow out of the mooring, and watching the racing going on was really frustrating. “When we finally got onto the racecourse under a lot of applause, it was really cool and special. It felt like we were the late bride arriving at the ceremony,” she said with a laugh. The Brazilians were given 5 points for each of the two races they missed. That is equivalent to sixth place out of the 12-boat fleet — two half-way results to keep them in the game for the rest of the weekend. While the Brazilians suffered through no fault of their own, the biggest shock at the end of Saturday’s four races was Great Britain sitting in last place. Dylan Fletcher’s crack crew have been in unflappable form over the past year, winning the 2025 championship and holding the overall lead after the first three events in Australia. On Saturday, two of Britain’s great strengths — fast starting and the ability to climb through the fleet after a poor start — both deserted them. Just 5 points split the top five atop the leaderboard, with Australia in first place with 10 points, USA second (9), Sweden third (8), Germany fourth (7) and Spain fifth (6). Aussie skipper Tom Slingsby was buoyant after a difficult session on the water in light and fluky winds wafting off the city and around the edge of Sugarloaf Mountain. “I really enjoyed racing today,” he said. “It was really tough and patchy, like a game of snakes and ladders, but we were a bit lucky, managed to work our way through the fleet, and came away with some decent results.” Following a catalogue of calamitous errors in 2025, the U.S. team has continued its road to redemption in Rio. With the city’s famous landmark, Christ the Redeemer, gazing down on the fleet in Guanabara Bay, skipper Taylor Canfield had the Americans in solid position after one day of racing. “Our goal on a day like today is to sail in clean lanes and go with what you see,” Canfield told The Athletic. “We’ve done a pretty good job with that in Sydney and the practice day yesterday. We just trust our gut and trust what we see on the water and choose the mode accordingly.” In the final race, when Canfield was vying with Slingsby for the lead at the first turning mark, the Australians foiled through their first jibe and into a commanding lead. A slight timing error resulted in the Americans sinking to the water and quickly dropping to sixth as others foiled past. “It’s heartbreaking watching boats foil on either side of you when there’s nothing you can really do,” Canfield said. “Maybe we could have had a better jibe there, but we ended up a little bit wide at Mark 1, and I’m not sure if we could have crossed the other boats behind us. Definitely a moment I would like back.” The other random factor, and one that will resonate with the many SailGP competitors who competed at the Rio Games in 2016, is the amount of trash and debris in the water. Nathan Outteridge, the skipper of the Swedish team, won an Olympic silver medal for Australia on these waters 10 years ago. “There’s plenty of debris out there,” he told The Athletic. “I didn’t see anything too big. It was mostly just plastic bags and stuff, which is obviously not a good thing. We might have caught something around one of our foils at one point because we were foiling along going very slowly. “Hopefully tomorrow, we get the wind flip around to the left, and we get a proper sea breeze, and we see some proper foiling action here because for the fans, today was a tough day to watch.” Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms