Spain wins Halifax SailGP thriller in brutal catamaran conditions

Spain’s Los Gallos won the Canada Sail Grand Prix in Halifax after a four-boat final that went right to the wire, taking their first event victory of the 2026 SailGP season in conditions that pushed the F50 fleet to the edge. Artemis SailGP Team chased them home, while the Explora Journeys Swiss SailGP Team reached its first final of the year and Halifax again proved it can turn a SailGP weekend into a full-bore catamaran test.

The final came after a difficult qualifying path for Diego Botín and his crew, who had to keep the boat alive in the kind of wind that exposes every weak tack, every late foil handoff and every shaky bear-away. SailGP described the day as brutally physical, with winds at the upper end of what the fleet could handle and the 27.5-meter wingsail paired with light-air foils forcing teams to balance raw speed against survival. In that setup, Halifax was less a chess match than a knife fight on foils.

Botín framed the win as the reward for taking the right risks in a fleet where the margins are tiny and the penalties are severe. That was plain across the rest of the field. Emirates GBR was sidelined after a warmup incident damaged its wing, and Mubadala Brazil was hit with a four-point penalty after crashing into a leeward gate mark. In one-design SailGP, those are not side notes. They are race-shaping events, and they underline how much the series depends on repair speed, crew discipline and keeping a damaged boat race-ready.

The result also moved Los Gallos into second overall, level on points with Emirates GBR and still behind the Bonds Flying Roos. SailGP called it the season’s fourth different event winner, another sign that the championship is tight enough for one clean final or one ugly mistake to reshuffle the table in a single afternoon. For multihull fans, that is the real draw of the F50 class: the boats are fast enough to look effortless, but the racing is decided by how well crews manage the violent edge of the platform.

Halifax has become one of SailGP’s sharpest pressure points. It was the first Canadian city to host a Sail Grand Prix, the 2024 event drew a dedicated broadcast audience of 19.5 million and generated an estimated US$45 million in economic impact, and the 2026 return brought a record 13 teams to the harbour. With more than 1,000 athletes, team members and families around the Halifax and Dartmouth waterfronts, the scene matched the racing: packed, loud and built for speed.