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Bermuda’s sailors concluded a grueling preliminary round-robin stage at the Team Racing World Championship in Stockholm, finishing tied for sixth before a tiebreaker relegated them to seventh place overall.
Navigating light and shifty breezes on Swedish waters, Bermuda posted a 3-4 record across seven demanding races on Day 3, bringing their overall standing to 11 wins and 11 losses.
The result left them level on points with host nation Sweden. While the two sides split their head-to-head encounters 1-1, Sweden’s victory in their most recent clash handed them sixth position on the secondary tiebreaker.
Format Restructure Triggers Ladder Knockout
Weather delays across the opening days prompted regatta organizers to scrap the traditional Gold and Silver round-robins. Instead, the championship moves straight into the final phase:
Medal Knockout (Places 1–4): The top four teams—USA 1, USA 2, New Zealand, and Great Britain—advance directly to contest the semi-finals, finals, and petit final.
"King of the Castle" (Places 5–12): The remaining eight nations enter an ascending knockout ladder to determine final placements.
Under the ladder system, 11th-placed Australia and 12th-placed Japan will race first, with the winner progressing to face 10th-placed Finland, climbing all the way to a clash against fifth-placed Ireland.
Starting from seventh, Bermuda will contest between one and three races on the final day, with the opportunity to finish as high as fifth overall with three consecutive wins
Greenslade: "Our Racing Has Gotten Better"
Despite the frustration of missing out on the top-four medal bracket, Bermuda pushed the world's elite to the limit in tricky conditions. All four of their Day 3 defeats came against teams inside the top five, with nearly every contest decided by mere boatlengths on the final leg.
Inconsistent umpiring calls and variable breeze added to the challenge, but the squad took major positives from their growing tactical sharpness.
Speaking after the day's racing, Bermuda’s Joshua Greenslade reflected on the team’s upward trajectory:
"Our racing has gotten better and better as the event has gone on. Even with our record today, we sailed really well in our losses and arguably we could have won all our races today—but that’s the difference between the top teams and us.
"Finishing the job off when we are in those situations and winning the final move was our weak point against the top teams."
Bermuda will look to convert that sharpness into results when racing gets underway for Sunday's knockout finale on Stockholm's Riddarfjärden.
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