TF35 Trophy opens season on Lake Geneva with tight racing
Cold rain, unstable wind and a flat Sunday turned Nyon into a Lake Geneva chess match, and Sails of Change 10 edged the opener on countback after four split winners.
Changing Lake Geneva conditions decided the TF35 season opener at Nyon, where the crew that adjusted fastest came out on top in a weekend of razor-thin margins. Four races were completed at the Société Nautique de Nyon from May 15 to 17, and each one had a different winner: X-Wing, Zen Too, Ylliam 17 and Sails of Change 10. When Sunday was abandoned at 15:15 because the lake went completely still, the Saturday standings stood, giving Sails of Change 10 the Grand Prix on countback ahead of Zen Too, with Ylliam 17 third.
That made the Nyon Grand Prix a clear lesson in Lake Geneva decision-making as much as a pure speed contest. The TF35 class had already spent weeks training from early April, but the opening races immediately shifted from the near-perfect breezes of practice into cold rain, unstable wind and repeated changes in pressure. On Friday, X-Wing struck first, while Ylliam XII and Realteam Spirit stayed in the fight and Sails of Change 8 had to recover from an over-early start. By Saturday, the course shape and stronger breeze asked different questions again, and the race committee had to stay busy as the leaderboard kept moving.
Sails of Change 10’s win carried extra weight because it was the boat’s first TF35 Grand Prix victory. Skipper Duncan Späth said the team had waited a long time for the result and that it would give them energy for the rest of the season. The message from the boat was clear: in a fleet this compressed, patience and clean execution matter as much as raw pace when the wind keeps shifting on the lake.
The opener also underlined how refined the TF35 circuit has become since the class began in 2021. These 15-meter foiling catamarans weigh about 1,200 kilos, plus roughly 500 kilos of crew load, and have been racing Lake Geneva at nearly three times the speed of the wind. That pace has not protected anyone from local conditions before, either, with the D35 W-Team winning the lake series in windless 2022 and 2023. Nyon showed the same pattern again: on a lake where the breeze can vanish in minutes, the best boat is the one that reads the shifts first. The season now moves to Mies on May 29 and 31, with Genève-Rolle-Genève on May 30, and the pressure to make the right calls will only rise from here.
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