Iain Jensen is finally set for his long-awaited homecoming.
For the 2026 SailGP season, the Olympic gold medallist has traded the Union Jack for the green and gold and will join the Flying Roos as they prepare to back up their win in Auckland in the waters of Sydney Harbour.
While Jensen makes the jump from the 2025 championship squad, Great Britain, the SailGP community views his move not as a defection but rather a long-overdue reunion.
He'll finally join the Australian team, alongside one of his closest friends, Tom Slingsby , on the international stage after 10 years.
"We grew up together, (Tom and I)," Jensen told Wide World of Sports.
"He's a little bit older than me, but when we grew up, when we were doing our Olympic campaigns for Australia, we were doing them at the same time.
"We were always rooming at all the events, basically for the (whole) London cycle.
"We've been really good friends, basically since the start of that cycle around 2009.
Australia's 49er crew of Nathan Outteridge and Iain Jensen are carried by teammates after winning Olympic gold. PA Images via Getty Images
"And we knew each other fairly well before then, but we definitely spent a lot of time together through that Olympic cycle and kept a really close friendship after that."
Jensen, more commonly known as 'Goobs', a nickname that stuck around from childhood, was Slingsby's best man at his wedding and is godfather to his son, Leo.
After years spent contributing to the British SailGP team's dominance, Jensen admitted the desire to competitively sail for his home country never truly faded.
He represented Australia at both the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Olympics and picked up a gold and silver medal respectively.
"I've been quite open within the last couple of years about wanting to represent the country again," Jensen said.
"I've known Tom a long time and we've been really good friends for over a decade now.
"So when he said there was an opportunity with Australia, I jumped at it.
"I'm really happy to be back representing the green and gold."
The transition hasn't been without its hurdles for the 37-year-old.
Though the move was on the cards for some time, Jensen was forced to watch from the sidelines during the first 2026 events in Perth and New Zealand after a training injury to his knee.
"It's been a bit weird joining the team and not actually going racing for the first couple of events," he said.
"The rehab's been going really well and I'm looking forward to trying the knee out, hoping it all goes well and we get racing."
Jensen's move highlights a rapidly evolving landscape in competitive sailing.
As SailGP expands and more teams are created each season, the demand for elite specialists has birthed a transfer market that mirrors mainstream sports like basketball or football.
Jensen is a wing trimmer in SailGP, the manpower behind the acceleration and deceleration on the boat as he manages the massive 24-metre wing sail to control power, speed and heel angle.
A hugely technical and pivotal role, the lack of experienced wing trimmers in sailing means that big trades and controversial movement in the sport is becoming more common.
Veteran teams such as Great Britain and Australia are having to contend with younger teams looking to poach their specialist team members. To combat this, SailGP has implemented a strict nationality rule.
Teams racing in their first and second seasons are permitted a total of three non-nationals, but this drops to two once a team progresses into its third season.
When teams reach their fourth season, they are allowed just one non-national in their ranks.
"(The) nationality rules opened up the sport. It's definitely made things a lot more interesting to the teams and the sailors," Jensen added.
"With the sport growing so quickly and more teams coming online every year, it's meant that there's a need to train up new sailors.
"But there's also a shortage of guys who are really experienced and have done quite a few seasons.
"There has been a few transfers going around and it's quite an interesting aspect. It's something that I haven't really experienced too much in the sailing world.
"It is starting to become more like a mainstream sport where you'd see transfer deals and big negotiations between teams.
"It's a cool aspect and it's really good to see sailing becoming a lot more professional and a lot more mainstream."
SailGP is well on its way to becoming a "mainstream" sport.
Bonds Flying Roos, driven by Tom Slingsby. Getty
In 2025, SailGP's dedicated audience who watch on the broadcast grew to nearly 215 million, with an average of 18 million viewers per event.
Jensen was recently tapped to join the defending champions, Team New Zealand, for the upcoming America's Cup in Naples, Italy in 2027.
The wing trimmer is set to join the team who made history as the first team to three-peat the sport's oldest international competition in the world.
"I'm really enjoying my sailing at the moment. I thought that when I came to Australia for (SailGP), that might have been me saying goodbye to America's Cup," Jensen admitted.
"Because once you step away from the British for SailGP, it might also mean you stepped away from the America's Cup for them as well.
"But when the opportunity came along to join Team New Zealand, I thought 'they've just won the America's Cup three times in a row'.
"I've spent a lot of time competing against them and you never really know what's going on behind closed doors.
"I was really interested to do some sailing with them and see what the culture's like over there.
A collision between the Black Foils and DS Team France during SailGP. Getty
"I mean, it was definitely a plus. I was thinking, 'oh, it's great. I'll just do SailGP these next few years and get to represent my home country.'
"I was really content with that, but then another great opportunity came along as well.
"I'm busy at the moment, but I'm happy."
The technological capabilities in SailGP blow multiple sports out of the water, but for all their engineering feats, teams cannot always stop terrifying crashes from happening.
In New Zealand, the home team and France were involved in a scary crash where two sailors were sent to hospital for further examinations, Kiwi grinder Louis Sinclair later announced to have suffered compound fractures to both legs.
Despite the high-tech nature of the F50 catamarans, the human element still remains the deciding factor and ultimate tie-breaker.
Because SailGP is a one-design fleet where every boat is mechanically identical, teams cannot out-engineer their rivals.
"The big difference is with sailing, all the boats are exactly the same," Jensen says.
"So in SailGP, the software is fleet-wide and the hardware is fleet-wide as well.
"It's not a development race, it's more 'you get these cool boats and they get upgraded all together.' So when one change gets made on one boat, it gets made fleet-wide.
"Then it comes down to the sailors who sail them."
May the best sailor win. And for Jensen, there's no better place to prove he's still the best in the world than on home waters.
The Sydney Sail Grand Prix begins on Saturday in Sydney Harbour.
For the 2026 season, the Olympic gold medallist has traded the Union Jack for the green and gold and will join the Flying Roos as they prepare to back up their win in Auckland in the waters of Sydney Harbour.
He'll finally join the Australian team, alongside one of his closest friends, , on the international stage after 10 years.
In New Zealand, the where two sailors were sent to hospital for further examinations, Kiwi grinder Louis Sinclair later announced to have suffered compound fractures to both legs.
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