Cagliari delivers perfect Olympic sailing showcase

Selling sailing as a spectator sport is not always an easy mission – particularly when the wind gods are not on the race committee’s side. The painfully light wind Olympic regatta in Marseille during Paris 2024 is a case in point. So too a number of SailGP’s events this season, and much of the Mediterranean section of this summer’s edition of The Ocean Race Europe.

But when the wind gods smile upon our sport, holy moly can we put on a show! This was very much the case this weekend as the joint 49er, 49erFX, and Nacra 17 2025 World Championships in Cagliari, Italy came to a spectacular conclusion with Sunday’s medal race series for all three fleets.

Cagliari had delivered good racing conditions throughout the six-day event that is the first major milestone for the three high-performance Olympic classes. Conditions on Sunday for the new two-race format medal race series – that was being trialled this weekend as a potential alternative to the proposed World Sailing format – saw the wind and sea state build steadily over the day from six to eight knots for the 49erFXs to a full-foam-up crescendo for the foiling Nacra 17s.

The live coverage of the event was simply superb. British sailing journalist and one-time Olympic campaigner Andy Rice and co-host Odil van Aanholt from the Netherlands – the 2024 49erFX world champion – delivered smart and insightful commentary, while the excellent visuals came by way of some truly superb drone piloting.

For those who despair of the incessant high-adrenaline screech of the SailGP commentary, Rice and van Aanholt’s well-modulated output will have been a breath of fresh air. Despite an absence of overlaid gridline graphics – I’m guessing the budget didn’t stretch that far – the duo in the commentary booth made it easy to follow the action from start to finish.

The three classes took turns to sail their medal series, with the 49erFXs going first, followed by the 49ers, and then the Nacra 17s. 

The test format comprised an initial 20-minute non-discardable race between the top 20 boats in the gold fleet, followed by a final 11 minute race between just the top four boats. Whoever wins that race is crowned world champion, with the remaining podium positions being determined by the standings in the overall series (including the initial medal race). It might sound a bit complicated but it’s easier to understand when you are watching, trust me.

Whether this format is the way forward for Olympic sailing is for smarter people than me to decide. What I will say is that as an online spectator I found myself engaged in the action throughout the day, while the jeopardy of the fourth and fifth placed teams battling to make the cut for the final race spiced things up nicely.

All three fleets delivered great action, but it was the Nacra 17s who really stole the show in their two races sailed in high teens wind strength and some awesome rolling seas had the crews on the edge of control as they hurtled downwind at 20 knots plus. Take a look for yourself and marvel as I did at the insane heel angles the top crews sail these boats at downwind to try to avoid digging in the leeward hull and the dreaded pitchpole.

Results-wise, it was the Spanish who dominated in the 49ers and 49erFXs. 

In the 49ers, despite having just stepped back in their boat after time away in SailGP the reigning Olympic champions Diego Botin and Florian Trittel claimed their first world championship victory in style. 

Meanwhile, in the 49erFXs Paula Barceló and María Cantero pulled off a truly audacious port tack start to deliver a wire-to-wire victory to claim the women’s title. Impressively this makes Barceló the first sailor to win the 49erFX world title as both a crew and a helm (she won the 2020 title crewing for Támara Echegoyen). 

The Nacra 17 showdown saw a thrilling pitched battle between the local Italian heroes Gianluigi Ugolini and Maria Giubilei and their training partners John Gimson and Anna Burnet (see main image).

This really was a full-on war of attrition with nothing between these two crews as they hurtled around the windward/leeward course on what looked like the very ragged edge of control throughout. In the end it was the British who held their nerve to disappoint the locals with Gimson and Burnet claiming their third Nacra 17 world title.