With lighter winds on the second and final day of SailGP’s Los Angeles stop, the racecourse was shrunk to an astonishingly small theater for the 11 F50s. With barely 600 meters between the leeward and windward marks there was little to no room for error and even less for pulling off perfect maneuvers. With teams required to sail four-up, the racing was purely manic and luck-laden for all—except, of course, the one team capable of pulling off a winning start.
The first day was equally frantic in the Port of Los Angeles with full foiling conditions and 12 teams crammed onto stadium-style racecourse (there were 12 until Denmark’s Team Rockwool took itself out of the regatta in the first race after clipping a leeward mark with its port T-foil). And it was consistency on the first day that ultimately put Northstar Canada in position to claim its first regatta win of the 2025 Season.
The Canadian team’s British helmsman Giles Scott, his fellow countryman and veteran wing trimmer Paul Campbell-James, flight controller Billy Gooderham, and strategist Annie Haeger (past US Olympic 470 sailor) were the foursome that delivered a decisive win in the three-boat finale after catching and then passing New Zealand’s Black Foils team with impressively smooth boathandling in the marginal foiling conditions. The Canadians posted the best fly time (99 percent) in the Final.
The surprising of the weekend was that of the Australian SailGP’s team’s uncharacteristic struggles. They were third in the fleet race standings after seven races, but were promptly shot out the back at the start in the Final.
“I forgot how to start today,” said skipper Tom Slingsby. “Starts were a real problem for me. It’s amazing how that can go from your biggest strength to your biggest weakness in a matter of weeks. While our results are good for season standings, we came here to win.”
Emirates GBR, the season leader, came on strong on Sunday, winning two of three races to almost make the Final. In the seventh race the Australians denied them a place in the Final with a miraculous pass of the American team on the short final leg into the finish.
“It was certainly a bit of a rollercoaster of emotions after we crossed the finish line with the win in that last race,” said skipper Dylan Fletcher. “We thought the Americans had done it and they were going to take the Aussies, but they said they stuffed their last tack which left it open, hats off to the Aussies they did a great job in that race. It’s obviously disappointing to miss out on the final by just one point, but I’m really proud of how the team came out swinging today.”
New Zealand’s Black Foils dominated the first two fleet races of the regatta, picking up where they left off at the previous event in Sydney, but they too had their struggles when trying to claw back places after a few poor starts. Still, finishing second in fleet races had them sliding into the Final as the favorite. They slingshot off the starting line and appeared to run away with the win, but the Canadians simply sailed a better race with cleaner maneuvers and overtook them halfway through the six-leg race.
The Canadian win in LA shuffled the middle of the leaderboard, moving Northstar from sixth to fourth and the Black foils from fourth to third behind Australia and Emirates GBR.
The U.S. SailGP Team, which finished ninth overall, picked up their second event point of the season. Improved results in Saturday’s windy races buoyed hopes of a better final result, but Sunday’s races knocked them to ninth overall. The team’s strategist and CEO Mike Buckley said they were disappointed in the results. They didn’t have the best starts, he added, but it “showed showed we could pass boats around the racecourse.”
The fleet heads to San Francisco for the second regatta of the US “doubleheader with racing scheduled for March 22-23.
