Flying Roos win third straight SailGP event in New York

Tom Slingsby’s BONDS Flying Roos turned New York into a season-shaping statement, winning their third consecutive SailGP event by edging Emirates GBR in a winner-takes-all final on the Hudson River. In patchy breeze and shifting pressure, the Australians again found the cleanest way through a racecourse that kept changing shape.

That matters because New York is one of SailGP’s hardest venues to manage well. The tight boundaries, the pressure changes and the intensity of the setting make it a place where tactical discipline matters as much as raw speed, and the Flying Roos handled that test better than anyone when it counted. Slingsby said the crew had been on the back foot earlier in the day, but they regrouped and closed hard in the final, which is exactly the sort of recovery that separates a good day from a championship-level one.

For the rest of the fleet, the issue is no longer whether the Australians can win in a straight fight. The question is whether anyone can put together a cleaner day across the full event. Three straight wins suggest BONDS Flying Roos are not just fast, they are resilient under pressure, able to absorb mistakes and still deliver when the final race decides everything. That is a dangerous combination in a series where one poor tack, one slow launch or one bad lane choice can flip an event.

The result also underlined how extreme the F50 class has become. These are one-design foiling catamarans built for precision, not margin for error, and New York’s urban wind patterns magnified every decision. Starts, crew coordination and instant reaction shaped the weekend, and the final made that crystal clear. With the Australians now carrying three straight event wins, the benchmark in the fleet has shifted, and the challengers have a clear target to catch.