Australia's BONDS Flying Roos, driven by three-time SailGP champion Tom Slingsby, have stormed to victory at the Rio Sail Grand Prix, winning four straight fleet races on Sunday to take the Brazilian event and reclaim the overall lead in the Rolex SailGP Championship.
Slingsby's side sailed through one of the most dominant Sunday performances in the short history of the league. After a Saturday that left five points covering the top five boats, the Australian crew — back in its familiar hot form after a sluggish early season — swept every race it needed to go from the middle of the fleet into outright event winners, with Spain's Los Gallos (Diego Botín) second and Sweden third.
AP News and the New York Times' Athletic both confirmed the result in their match reports, with the Athletic noting Australia had "won all four races on the final day" to take the championship lead. Sail-World's coverage put it more bluntly: "SailGP: Australia win four straight in Rio as top teams topple." SailGP's own race day broadcast captured the decisive final run, a drag race down to the gate that had Slingsby on the radio calling for the final gybe that sealed the event.
The result is a pivotal moment for Slingsby's team. The Flying Roos had slipped from their position as the class of the fleet across the back end of season five, and the early 2026 calendar — the season-six opener in Perth and the Sydney event — had been dominated by Emirates GBR and the resurgent Spaniards. Rio changes that calculus entirely: with the championship mid-season still to come, Australia is now the in-form crew with momentum on its side.
Spain's second place continues what has been a remarkable run of form for Botín's team, which also announced recently that its nucleus — Botín himself and Florian Trittel — would combine its SailGP programme with an America's Cup campaign alongside a French syndicate and an LA28 Olympic 49er push. Sweden's third-place podium cap gave the Nordic entry its best result of the young season.
The absence of Emirates GBR and New Zealand's Black Foils — the latter still working through the aftermath of the February Auckland collision review — also reshaped the Rio podium picture, though Slingsby's margin on Sunday was such that neither boat's presence would likely have changed the ultimate winner.
For the league, Rio delivered the high-variance, highly watchable racing SailGP had promised when it took the circuit into Guanabara Bay. For the Flying Roos, the weekend was something more fundamental: a title statement, delivered four races in a row.