VR – V is for Victory, R is for Roos!

Our Shipping & Sailing Correspondent Jean Hudson reports that BONDS Flying Roos Win it All at Sassnitz, Germany, on the Baltic Sea in Event 9, Rolex SailGP Season 6 | August 22–23, 2026

Guten Tag from Sassnitz – I’m not actually in Germany, but I’m in Europe and was able to watch the SailGP racing as it happened!

Bonds Flying Roos dominated the weekend from start to finish — they topped their qualifying group on Saturday, then won Sunday’s Grand Final by a commanding margin to take the $400,000 top prize. They now lead the overall championship with a fifth win of the 2026 season and a 14 point lead!

Nearly 15,000 fans attended this Baltic Sea event and witnessed a new speed record – DS Automobiles Sail GP Team France hit 107.63 km/h during the first day’s final race. 

Day 1 — Saturday, August 22

Racing opened with six races, five different winners, and a new F50 speed record. The Roos set the tone immediately in Group B: Slingsby’s crew led at the first mark of the opening race and resisted a challenge from Canada before taking victory, then controlled the start again in race two, stretching away to win by 24 seconds ahead of Emirates GBR.  Slingsby summed up the ease of it: “It felt super easy in the first two races. You get a good start, you’re out in front and you’re just sailing around by yourself.”

Their third race was messier — a wobble on leg five nearly let NorthStar back in, but the Australians held on  — before the fleet’s headline moment: DS Automobiles France hit 107.63 km/h in the final race, obliterating the previous all-time record of 103.93 km/h set by Denmark in Sassnitz in 2025, with ROCKWOOL Racing also beating the old mark before a high-speed nosedive.  As you might gather, Sassnitz is a super fast course. Australia closed the day topping Group B on 10 points, one clear of Sweden’s Artemis on 9. The Baltic breeze hit 40 km/h and all boats used 18 m wing sails.

Day 2 — Sunday, August 23

The Grand Final was sailed in wild, shifting conditions — sunshine one moment, rain squalls killing the breeze on one side of the course the next. The Flying Roos made it look simple: a pinpoint start carried them to a clear lead at Mark 1, which they never surrendered, riding the pressure all the way to the finish line for a comfortable win.

Behind them, chaos: as the wind died, NZ’s Black Foils, Spain’s Los Gallos, and NorthStar Canada dropped off the foils entirely and drifted through the final stages at displacement speed. NorthStar’s Giles Scott played the course boundary to force his rivals wide and snatch second. The Roos, by then, had already finished, collected their trophy, and were walking into the prizegiving venue before turning back to watch the scramble finish behind them. Haha!

Final standings:

1. 🇦🇺 Bonds Flying Roos — Tom Slingsby

2. 🇨🇦 NorthStar Canada — Giles Scott

3. 🇪 Los Gallos — Diego Botín

4. 🇳🇿 Black Foils — Peter Burling

Championship Impact

The Roos arrived in Sassnitz 12 points clear at the top of the standings, with Los Gallos closing after back-to-back wins in Halifax and Portsmouth. A dominant weekend — group win plus Final victory — pads that cushion further heading into Valencia, Geneva, and the November Abu Dhabi finale. With nine events completed and just four remaining – the question is clear: can anyone catch the Bonds Flying Roos?

*Words by Jean Hudson. Jean is our Shipping and Sailing Correspondent and also a regular feature writer, reviewer and photographer here on the Shipping News. You may also like to follow up her informative Places I Love stories, as well as other feature stories and Freo Today photographs, right here.

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