Racing green

Ainslie's GB team are making waves on and, even more notably, off the water

- Emma John

British sailors have always been a belligerent bunch. Francis Drake, Lord Nelson, Admiral Cunningham ... and, of course, Sir Ben Ainslie. The most successful Olympian in sailing's history is also the sport's equivalent of The Hulk: you really don't want to make him angry.

So perhaps it's a good thing that there has been plenty to annoy him this year, not least that acrimonious split from his America's Cup team owner, Sir Jim Ratcliffe. In true Ainslie style, it only seems to have made him more dangerous. His Emirates GBR team top the SailGP championship going into this weekend's grand final. And on Wednesday, they were named 2025 winners of its Impact League, which ranks the racing teams on the contribution they have made to their social and natural environment.

If you haven't come across SailGP before, it's where the world's best sailors compete when they're not at the Olympics or the America's Cup. Launched four years ago, it gave the sport an F1-style calendar, in which a fleet of foiling catamarans race each other over a season of grand prix weekends. Its F50s are the fastest sailing boats on the planet.

That short-form fleet racing is not the only revolutionary thing about it. SailGP was founded to make sailing more viable as a career - in other words, sustainability was a core motivation. Its organisers have embedded that principle within the competition itself by awarding side-by-side trophies - one for what happens on the water, and another for what happens off of it. For the past four years its Impact League has been just as fiercely fought.