Editor’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.
Britain came from behind to win a tense three-way battle in the Grand Final at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix to win the SailGP championship.
Australia led in the early stages of Sunday’s final after a well-executed start by driver Tom Slingsby, then New Zealand moved into the lead at the halfway stage.
But when Australia and New Zealand peeled out to the left at the top of the downwind leg, Dylan Fletcher steered the British boat around the opposite mark to the right. The British hooked into a solid gust of breeze and foiled past the shoreside crowd into a commanding lead, never to be challenged.
The Grand Final is a one-off race between the top three teams in the overall standings after the season’s 12 Grands Prix, with the winner crowned champions of this close-to-shore sailing championship.
Fletcher, his strategist Hannah Mills and the rest of the British crew have been the most consistent across the 12 events, so even if the nature of the winner-takes-all race is uncomfortable territory for the conservative sport of sailing, few would argue that they were the most deserving winners of season five.
Fletcher told The Athletic: “Not the start we wanted in that race. We wanted to be leading at mark one, but we kept it tight with the others and worked hard to give ourselves an opportunity.”
Mills added: “The important thing when we were behind was to do the simple things well and keep the pressure on, push them to make mistakes.”
When Fletcher steered the opposite way out of the top of the course, he said he could see momentum shifting in their favour.
“As soon as we got around the top gate I was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s definitely on.’ I might have gybed [change course] just one metre away from the boundary [which could have resulted in a painful stop-go penalty], so it was fine margins. But we did it and I’m so proud of the mindset in this team and how we work together.”
Britain, helmed by Dylan Fletcher, races away from the SailGP stadium on the second day of racing in Abu Dhabi. (Felix Diemer for SailGP)
Even in defeat, Slingsby was still proud of how his team had pulled together for the final race. “We kind of know how the other teams play the final. Generally in these three-boat races you want to be the boat that’s out of sync and doing something different, and let the other two boats fight. So we went in and gybed at the last second and came out ahead at the intersection, and the start went well,” he told The Athletic.
Australia is the only team to have taken part in all five Grand Finals, winning the first three. The Aussies edged out Spain, who went on the attack this weekend to try to grab that third spot in the Grand Final.
“We had done the hard work that made us overcome Spain,” he told SailGP. “We start well and we’re leading in the $2 million final and we let it slip. That will eat away at me for a long time.”
For New Zealand, who finished third behind Australia, this is the third successive Grand Final the team has competed in yet come away without the big prize.
“That’s the race where we’ve seen the most lead changes,” driver Pete Burling told The Athletic, admitting that he had considered choosing the same move that ultimately won the race for Britain.
“I felt we could easily have taken the right turn there as well, but we decided to lock in on the left. Looking back at it we had a pretty healthy lead halfway up the upwind leg, so definitely a bit of frustration [at not winning the race].”
Britain’s victory in the Grand Final earned Fletcher and his fellow sailors $2m which, added to their winnings across the season, takes their overall prize money to $4.4m, significantly ahead of New Zealand who were the second-biggest prize winners on $1.76m.
For a sport that has barely seen prize money in its long history, these are big numbers for a group of sailors experiencing a rapid transformation and professionalization at the top of grand prix sailing.
While Britain became season victors, it was Denmark who were top performers across the Abu Dhabi weekend, Nicolai Sehested steering the Danish boat to only its second event victory and its first since 2021.
While the victors celebrate this evening in Abu Dhabi, it’s little more than six weeks to the start of season six which kicks off in mid-January in Perth, Australia. After the soft breeze of this event, where the challenge was to keep the F50 on its foils, the 25-knot winds of the ‘Fremantle Doctor’ will make for a frenetic, high-speed start to the new year.