SailGP: Spain win tight Canada SailGP Halifax - Day 2
by Richard Gladwell/Sail-World.com 21 Jun 14:08 PDT
The Honourable Andy Fillmore, Mayor of Halifax, alongside the winning Los Gallos SailGP Team - Race Day 2 - Canada Sail Grand Prix in Halifax - June 22, 2026, © Katelyn Mulcahy/SailGP
Spanish Olympic Gold medallist, Diego Botin and his well-credentialed crew aboard Los Gallos, had an end-to-end win in the first four-boat SailGP Final in Halifax Harbour.
Racing was moved ahead by two hours to start at 2.00pm local time due to the threat of thunderstorms. There was a good breeze today, making for excellent foiling conditions and fast, tactical racing.
This was the first-ever four-boat Final and is a format that looks set to stay, producing one of the closest races for the event win. Canada SailGP was the first event to split the fleet into two groups for both days, seeded according to their rankings in the Season championship. Gone was the start line congestion of New York as 13 teams jostled for a spot on the front row of the grid.
In split-fleet racing, the group phase was more about speed and strategy than traffic management. Aside from the Spanish start in the final group race, there was none of the derring-do, squeeze through a gap and hope the gate doesn't get closed on you starts, which has previously caused expensive collisions. Often forgotten is that the T-Foils extend well beyond the sheerline, and a foil strike at 30kts will not be pretty - even with detachable tips.
Rig turbulence - the bane of the mass start racing for those back in the van of the fleet - became much less of a factor. Fans got more, and better quality racing - with five races sailed on Day 2, instead of the usual three races. The day more than made up for the disappointing opening day, where the under-rigged F50s struggled in the light conditions.
The big gain of the Group qualification system is that, in the Final, instead of seeing competitors who have already raced against each other several times, the top teams from each group now come together in a unique Final, where they meet for the first time in the regatta.
Maybe not surprisingly, none of the teams involved in serious Season 6 collisions made it to the Final - whether that be due to shell-shock, or a lack of commissioning time, but the message is clear. The afterguard switch aboard Mubadala Brazil didn't click instantly, but new skipper Paul Goodison was upbeat about their performance.
"It's fantastic to get back in the driving spot. I think we did four races, including the one that was abandoned, and out of those four, we were second around Mark 1 in three of those. So that's a great step forward in our start, which we've been focusing on a lot.
"As for the comms, we've still got a lot of work to do. But I think it was a step forward, and again, I think the team's a bit on a better trajectory now. We've got to see what the future holds and how we set up for the future. But I think we're in a very good state."
The South American team finished sixth of seven boats in Group A.
They arguably had the hardest draw, with Season leaders Australia and the always difficult Spanish team emerging from that phase of the racing as the top two qualifiers.
However, the Spanish pushed it at the start in a situation that has previously provided plenty of overtime for the shore crews, to date in Season 6. They drove into a closing gap coming from astern at full speed, but got away with it [see at 18:15 in the Live Video]. "We took high risks. It paid off," Diego Botin said after the racing. "But it was really close not to be on the other side [of the start line.]"
"The fleet is so close that you need to take a high risk to be able to have a chance to win. For us today was about taking those risks, as I said, it's amazing to pull it off."
While the split fleets may have eased congestion at the starts and round marks, it remains to be seen how long this will last. Teams will realise that the gaps are there for the taking, particularly at the start, and as the Spanish so aptly demonstrated, pushing through a small gap can be the difference between making a Final or not. And once in the Final, there's always a chance of an Event win.
Close behind the top four were the Black Foils (NZL), who turned in a very creditable performance with a new boat for their new investors. The Kiwis finished just 1pt behind the Spanish in their group. Had the points been tied, the Kiwis would have made the cut for the Final on a tiebreaker, by virtue of beating the Spanish in their final group race.
A difficult-to-execute match-racing move in the final race of Group A almost worked for Peter Burling - as he slowed his boat to hold up Spain, and let Denmark through in between. It was a bold move. If Denmark had been just half a metre further forward than the Spanish, the Kiwis would have made the Final.
In Group B, Artemis Racing (Sweden) emerged as the top boat, with Explora Switzerland placing second just 1pt adrift. They headed off to the USA and Germany, who tied on 10 points, with Italy back in 5th place. Group B was the easier of the two, with only six teams, reducing to five after Emirates GBR continued their now-erratic run of form with a serious nosedive triggered by a fish-tailing rudder that broke the surface just before the start of racing.
"The wing landed on the shrouds and ended up breaking multiple elements of the flap, so that sort of ruled us out for the entire day," skipper Dylan Fletcher explained in the Mixed Zone after the racing. They were craned from the water, while the others in their group were racing, now just a five-boat fleet.
Los Gallos, sailing one of the oldest boats in the F50 fleet, turned on yet another superb display of sailing under pressure in their arm-wrestle at the top of the fleet with Artemis Racing - arguably the Emirates Team NZ works team with three of their America's Cup team aboard. Both Diego Botin and Nathan Outteridge are 49er Olympic Gold medalists, albeit three Olympic cycles apart. They thrust and parried right around the seven-leg course for the Final, with Artemis breaking through for a period just before Mark 5, but Botin recovered, and rounded ahead by just 1sec, before setting off on the downwind leg.
The Spanish Gold medalist, accompanied as always by his Gold medal-winning crew Florian Trittel, as wing trimmer, picked the best side of the course on the final downwind leg, and emerged with their lead intact at the bottom. They made sure they stayed between their man and the mark to win by just over a boat-length. Explora Switzerland (Séb Schneiter) was a credible third, managing to hold off the Bonds Flying Roos, with skipper Tom Slingsby being unable to pull off his usual Houdini act in the closing stages of the Final.
Sail GP now moves across the Atlantic, beginning its European tour, with the next Regatta in Portsmouth - one of the most successful events of the 2025 Season 5.