One of Rolex SailGP’s original six teams, Australia blasted into the league in dominating form, winning four of the five events in Season 1 and taking the inaugural Championship crown. The team repeated the feat in Seasons 2 and 3, fending off competition from rising teams as the league expanded.
An uncharacteristic run of unsuccessful event finals in Season 4 saw the Aussies pick up one event title, but the team still easily qualified for the winner-takes-all Grand Final, taking second place overall after crossing the line shortly behind the Spanish.
The key to the team’s success has long been attributed to its established racing history - with team members Tom Slingsby, wing trimmer Kyle Langford, and grinders Kinley Fowler and Sam Newton racing together for over 15 years, including three America’s Cup campaigns and four seasons of Rolex SailGP. But with Langford’s transfer to the incoming Red Bull Italy team spearheaded by Rolex SailGP legend Jimmy Spithill, all that has changed.
Alongside Australia’s understated ‘relative success’, the team is also a ‘group of best mates’, Langford says. “We work so well together - we’re just like clockwork.” In-between previous Rolex SailGP seasons, Slingsby previously said he was fighting a wave of ‘crew poachers’, and now Langford reveals that Spithill - former driver of the United States - previously approached him to join the American team. At the time though, ’the circumstances weren’t quite right to get me to leave the Australians’.
But between Season 4 and the 2025 Season, circumstances changed. Just like Langford and the Australian team, Langford and Spithill go way back. In 2010, Langford won the RC44 World Championship in a crew led by Spithill and three years later Spithill personally recruited him into Oracle Team USA’s America’s Cup campaign. In Langford’s eyes, Spithill is ‘the best sailor in the world’ and ‘someone [he’s] always enjoyed working with’. “His demeanor when he’s sailing and the way he leads the team is something I’ve always looked up to,” he says. “We’ve had success together and also disappointments, but the way he leads the team through those ups and downs makes him a great person to be involved with.” The proposition to join the U.S. team might not have enticed Langford, but when he heard Spithill was launching an Italian team, that changed. “When he told me his vision of the team, who was going to be involved and made me an offer - it was quite attractive,” he says.
Separately, there’s the ‘challenge of starting something new and fresh’ that makes ‘SailGP exciting’ for Langford again. “I’m not saying it was stale, but it’s a new perspective,” he says. A long term contract also means Langford can focus on the ‘long term goal of building this team’ and ‘being in a position where I can heavily influence its culture’. “I know we’re not going to be as competitive as Australia immediately, but (…) I’m here for the long haul to really develop the team with the goal of eventually winning.”
There were other circumstances too that made the move to Italy so attractive. Langford points specifically to the incoming T-Foils, which will be rolled out fleet-wide from Auckland. “That was one of the reasons for me taking on this challenge,” he says. “The fact that we have new equipment that everyone has to learn and everyone is back to the drawing board in terms of figuring these things out - that really helps the new teams.”
The groundswell of crew transfers that have rocked the league in the off-season ‘also helps’, with Langford’s move to Italy and Kiwi flight controller Andy Maloney’s move to Mubadala Brazil disrupting the established crews of league leaders Australia and New Zealand. Giles Scott’s move from Emirates GBR to Canada was also ‘a big loss’ for the British team, he says. “When I made the decision to leave Australia, I didn’t know anyone else was leaving other teams - so that’s been a bit of a bonus”. Despite this, he still expects these teams to be competitive when racing begins. “They have the majority of their teams still together, so it’s less of a concern because they’ve maintained the core of their teams.”
Despite being ‘excited’ to start this new chapter with Italy, Langford says he’s also ‘devastated’ to leave the Aussies. “I’ve never not been on the Australian boat, so it’s definitely going to be a strange feeling to see them in Dubai,” he says. “It’s probably going to hurt a little bit to see the Australians up there, and us potentially not fighting for the podium right away - but that’s what I signed up for.”
With racing on the horizon, Langford is optimistic, but realistic, about Italy’s chances in its debut season. “Seeing the progress that we’ve made during the 10 days of training in Dubai has been huge,” he says. While the light air venue of Dubai might be ‘the perfect training venue for a new team’, the windier venues of Auckland, Sydney and San Francisco are on the near horizon. “We’re going to be thrown into the fire at those events, but hopefully we’re doing enough groundwork here that we can be prepared.”
For now though, the team is focusing solely on its ‘development’ in Dubai. “We can’t have too high expectations,” he says. “Our goal is really to get around the course cleanly, not have any instances with other boats, have clean laps and where we end up in the fleet is where we end up.”
