Australia has won the first ever SailGP season after beating Japan in a head to head championship final in Marseille.
The fifth and final event of the inaugural international competition took place on September 20-22, with five crews representing Australia, France, Great Britain, the United States, China and Japan going head to head off the coast of Marseille.
The global league’s first season culminated in a final 10-minute match between Australia and Japan.
After building a reputation as the team to beat, it was the Australia SailGP team that sailed to victory, beating Nathan Outteridge’s Japan SailGP team in the final race and clinching the $1 million prize money.
Speaking about the win, Australia helmsman Tom Slingsby said: “We deserved it and I’m so happy for our whole team as the amount of work they put in was huge. We said going into today we were going to win as a team or lose as a team.”
He commended Outteridge’s Japan SailGP team for being “unbelievable competition” making the final match “a close battle”.
Elsewhere, the China SailGP team managed to clinch third place overall from the Great Britain team, which came in fourth. France meanwhile placed fifth while the US finished sixth.
The Marseille final closes the first season of the international competition, which saw more than 115,000 people cheer on their favourite teams on site.
The second season of the competition is set to get underway on February 28-29, 2020 in Sydney.