Tom Slingsby walked off the Rio podium in late April with the words of a driver who had finally got the answer he was looking for. The BONDS Flying Roos had not just won the Enel Rio Sail Grand Prix — they had dominated it, sweeping all three qualifying fleet races on Day Two before claiming the winner-takes-all final on Guanabara Bay.
"I'm really pleased with the team," Slingsby said. "We've brought together a group with huge potential and although we hadn't fully clicked before, today we finally showed what we're capable of when everything comes together."
It was Australia's second event win of the 2026 season and lifted them to 35 points on the Rolex SailGP Championship leaderboard, seven clear of Dylan Fletcher's Emirates GBR and eight ahead of the United States. With Bermuda this weekend marking the fifth of twelve season events, the gap is meaningful without yet being decisive.
The Rio victory had a personal layer too. The win came alongside Australia's new flight controller, nicknamed Goobs, in his first event in the role. "It's a really satisfying feeling, not just as a driver but also seeing it from a broader perspective," Slingsby said. "It was also special to get this first win with Goobs."
Not everything went smoothly. The Australians made first contact with another boat in their SailGP history during a tricky pre-start sequence in Rio. Slingsby took ownership of the moment without flinching. "It was a challenging day, especially with the conditions and that incident at the start — the sun made it really hard to judge distances, and I misjudged it, which led to contact," he said. "It's actually the first time we've hit another boat in SailGP so not ideal but we were lucky it didn't impact the final result."
That composure has been a recurring theme since the three-time Rolex SailGP Champions briefly lost the title to Britain at the end of last season. The Roos opened 2026 watching Fletcher's crew win Perth, and they have steadily ground their way back to the front. Wins at Sydney's home event and Auckland — "a monkey off our back," Slingsby called the Auckland breakthrough — preceded the Rio masterclass.
The atmosphere at the inaugural Brazilian event impressed Slingsby as much as the result. "Racing here in Rio for the first time was incredible," he said. "It's an iconic venue with tricky, shifting conditions, but it was an amazing atmosphere. The support from the crowd was fantastic and we really loved sailing here."
Bermuda offers a very different test. The Great Sound's flat water and predictable thermals tend to reward technical precision rather than the gust-management skills demanded by Guanabara. With Saturday forecast for steady foiling breeze and Sunday lighter, the Australians will need to bank early to keep their championship lead climbing.