Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman buy Australian sailing team
Hollywood co-stars and close friends Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman have been named the new co-owners of Australia's SailGP team.
The actors, who starred together in Deadpool & Wolverine, announced on Thursday, US time, they had purchased the successful team, which has won three championships in just four seasons.
In a joint statement, Reynolds and Jackman said they were "incredibly excited to set sail together in this new adventure".
"Hugh brings a deep love for and pride in his home country as well as being an avid fan of sailing," the statement said.
"He will also be bringing his overly clingy emotional support human along for the ride.
"Apologies in advance to Australia.
"No comment on whether we're writing this in our BONDS. No further questions."
This is the latest sports venture for Reynolds, who purchased Wrexham AFC – one of the world's oldest soccer clubs – alongside fellow Hollywood actor Rob McElhenney.
They chronicled their 2021 purchase and subsequent stewardship of the club in wildly popular Disney+ docuseries, Welcome to Wrexham.
The club has gone on to achieve incredible success, becoming the first team in English football history to achieve three consecutive promotions, climbing from the National League to the Championship.
Reynolds and McElhenney were also among a group of investors in the Alpine Formula One team in 2023 and were part of an investment group that acquired Colombian club La Equidad this year.
Reynolds and Jackman join driver and chief executive Tom Slingsby in rebranding the Australian team as the BONDS Flying Roos, with underwear company BONDS as its title partner.
Slingsby, an Olympic gold medallist, told the ABC that Reynolds became interested in the purchase after members of his team attended several SailGP events.
"They pitched it to Ryan, saying, 'Hey, this is a pretty cool sport — maybe we should come check it out and get involved'," Slingsby said.
He said the actors would bring "star power" and a "storytelling ability" to the sport, but would not be drawn on whether a docuseries like Welcome to Wrexham was on the horizon.
The rebranded team is now preparing for its debut at the Mubadala New York Sail Grand Prix, kicking off Saturday, local time.
"There no better way to cap off an amazing week for us than winning the event," Slingsby said.
"I'm a sailor at heart, and that's my main focus — trying to win events for Australia. That's what we've got to try to do this weekend."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
ABC News
23 minutes ago
- ABC News
Geraldine Brooks on her memoir Memorial Days and travelling to Flinders Island to do 'the work of grief'
In 2019, Geraldine Brooks was sitting at her desk at home in Martha's Vineyard, working on her sixth novel, Horse, when the phone rang. On the line was a doctor from a hospital in Washington DC, calling to say her husband, journalist and author Tony Horwitz, had collapsed in the street. "I'm expecting her to say, 'And now he is in surgery,' or, 'We're keeping him for observation,'" Brooks tells ABC TV's Compass. "And instead, she says, 'He's dead.' Just like that." Horwitz — a Pulitzer Prize-winner, like his wife — was midway through a busy tour promoting his latest book, Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide. Brooks couldn't understand how a man so fit and full of vitality had died so suddenly. "I just couldn't assimilate it." She wanted to howl in pain but feared that if she lost control, she might never regain it. In her new memoir, Memorial Days, she describes how, from that day on, she put on an "endless, exhausting performance" to give the impression she was fine. Eventually, however, Brooks realised she couldn't go on pretending. "I felt like this love had not been acknowledged by the capacious grief that it deserved. That's when I thought of Flinders Island," she says. In 2023, Brooks travelled to the remote Tasmanian island to confront her feelings, a cathartic experience she recounts in Memorial Days. And now, two years later, she returns to Flinders Island with ABC TV's Compass to discuss the important work of grief. Now one of Australia's most celebrated authors, Brooks began her journalism career at the Sydney Morning Herald. After covering the Franklin Dam controversy in the early 80s, she got a scholarship to Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in New York City, where she met a fellow journalist by the name of Tony Horwitz. "I was initially attracted to him because he was such an idealist. He had this high moral seriousness and a great sense of humour," Brooks recalls. The couple married in France in 1984 and moved to Sydney for a brief stint, before life again took a different direction. "Out of the blue, the Wall Street Journal called and said, 'Would I like to become the Middle East correspondent?'" The answer was yes, and an adrenaline-filled decade followed, reporting on geopolitical crises throughout the region. As foreign correspondents, Brooks and Horwitz often shared joint bylines, earning the tag 'Hobro' in the Wall Street Journal newsroom. "We were always getting calls in the middle of the night [to cover a story] … We lived with a duffel bag packed with crazy things; I had a chador and a bulletproof vest. "We often worked on different sides of the same story — [if] he was in Iraq, I would be in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War and vice versa." Brooks eventually gave up journalism to write fiction, publishing the bestselling plague novel, Year of Wonders, in 2001 and winning a Pulitzer in 2006 for her US Civil War novel, March. She and Horwitz remained in the US, raising their two sons, Nathaniel and Bizu, in an 18th-century mill house on Martha's Vineyard, an island off the New England coast. "Their relationship is probably one of the all-time love stories," Bizu says. "More than anything, [he] revered and respected and loved how smart, intelligent and passionate she was about everything." Brooks first visited Flinders Island with Horwitz in 2000 to research a novel. Together they'd toured the island, marvelling at its natural beauty. They were confronted by its dark history too. At Wybalenna, they viewed the unmarked graves of Aboriginal people who died on the island after being forcibly removed from Tasmania in the 1800s. Brooks ended up abandoning the project, but she was taken with the island and toyed with the idea of one day buying a block there. When she returned in 2023, it was in very different circumstances. "For three years after his death, I'd been pretending to be normal. And I wasn't normal. I wasn't right … I wasn't myself," she says. "You're supposed to work through denial, anger, bargaining, acceptance, and I'd vaulted all the intermediate steps and pretended that I'd arrived at acceptance. You can't do that. "I needed to go back and work my way through those steps." For Brooks, Flinders Island offered "time and space … to do the business of mourning". "Grief counselling would've been one way," she acknowledges. "But I thought, 'Well, what do writers do? Writers write.'" She rented a shack overlooking a goblet-shaped bay, gazing out at the granite outcrop known as Mount Killiecrankie. There, alone and without distraction, Brooks returned to the worst day of her life to work through her grief. "I would get up in the morning and … do the work, write my thoughts, and then when I realised that I had a cramp and hadn't moved in hours, I'd go for a walk." She found solace in the rocky, windswept landscape. "I fell in love with granite," she says. "The rocks on Flinders Island are in these sculptural shapes. They're great works of art, monumental sculptures that completely moved me in the way art moves you." She also found another kind of comfort in her solitude. "I realised I wasn't alone. I was with Tony. I was able to be with him night and day. And it was wonderful." Brooks fell into a routine on the island, ending each day with a swim in the ocean. "At first it was just a swim. But as I got deeper and deeper into the work, I realised that there was something almost ceremonial about it," she says. "It became this gift to myself to be fully immersed and completely alone in my skin, in the water, like some kind of aquatic creature. And it felt cleansing and healing." Brooks felt a connection between her daily swim and the mikvah, a purifying bathing ritual that had formed part of her conversion to Judaism when she married Horwitz three decades earlier. Horwitz's Judaism was cultural rather than religious or spiritual. "If he had died and I was an Orthodox Jew, there would've been a very set road map to travel, a pathway into and out of grief," Brooks says. "There are strict rules. The first one, I think, is incredibly insightful: in the first hours after somebody experiences a loss like this, you don't even offer them condolences. They're in a state of 'stupefying grief' is how it's put. All you do is help them. "It's only after the burial that the grieving and condolences start." Known as Shiva, this formal mourning period lasts for seven days. "You sit and let people come and talk about the deceased. You don't bathe, you cover the mirrors, you're taken out of time," Brooks says. In her travels, Brooks has observed similar mourning rituals in other cultures, but found these customs largely absent from Western society. "I had no idea what a brutal, broken system it is when somebody dies suddenly far from home among strangers," she says. "I wasn't allowed to see his body. I got to Washington thinking that I could be with him and hold his hand and say goodbye. And I get to the hospital, and it's not allowed. They just show you a photograph and it's horrible. It wasn't until days later when he was finally released to the funeral home that I was finally able to see him." Alone on Flinders Island, Brooks found herself instinctively adopting the practices of Shiva. "I realised, I'd been swimming every day, but I hadn't had a shower, and there was no mirror in the shack," she says. "I was making it up as I went along but finding my own way to some of these things that have been enshrined for millennia in old religious practices." During her stay on Flinders Island, revisiting that terrible day in her mind, Brooks felt the howl of grief return. "I felt it coming back and I let it come," she says. "And after that, I realised that the time had done what it needed to do, and I was ready to go home." Brooks will never stop grieving for Horwitz, but she's found a kind of peace. "What I have been able to do … [is] set down that life I'd expected to have — growing old with him — and just accept that that life is gone. I ain't getting that back. I have to make the most of the life that I do have." Writing Memorial Days was instrumental to this process. "When you're in grief, the best thing you can do is tell your story … It wasn't until I wrote my story that I was able to feel like a normal human being again," she says. Watch Geraldine Brooks. Grief, A Love Story on Compass on Sunday night at 6:30pm on ABC TV, or stream now on iview.
News.com.au
43 minutes ago
- News.com.au
Stock Tips: Never mind the alpha, what's the Sigma play this week?
It's no easy gig analysing share prices and company performance but somebody's got to do it. Every week two experts from our Share Tips columnist pool give us their recommendations. Sean Conlan – Leyland Private Asset Management BUY Sigma Healthcare (ASX:SIG) We believe SIG will grow into its current PE multiple by refurbishing existing Chemist Warehouse stores, opening 20 new stores per annum across Australia and by exporting the brand offshore. Judo Capital Holdings (ASX:JDO) Improved funding costs give us more comfort on the near-term margin outlook. With forecast a~34% earnings CAGR over the next three years, and trading at only 12x FY26 P/E we think the valuation is attractive. HOLD Treasury Wine Estates (ASX:TWE) TWE has trimmed guidance for FY25 earnings growth, citing lower-than-expected wine sales in the US where economic uncertainty is hurting consumer demand. Austal (ASX:ASB) We remain positive on the long-term outlook for ASB, considering the macro tailwinds and attractive growth profile, however, we are conscious of its current valuation. SELL Bank of Queensland (ASX:BOQ) While BOQ's simplification strategy and pivot towards business is bearing fruit, we think it will continue to struggle to make returns above the cost of capital over the medium term. Lovisa Holdings (ASX:LOV) We are concerned about the quality of stores recently opened and think that higher-than-normal rates of discounting may be driving strong LFL sales. Chris Watt – Bell Potter Securities BUY CAR Group (CAR) Resilient RV sales, solid international operations and strong earnings momentum support continued growth. The company continues to benefit from a scalable global expansion strategy that allows it to replicate its model across international markets. Treasury Wine Estates (ASX:TWE) While the US premium wine market is weak, core luxury brands remain strong. DAOU Vineyards synergies and broader international opportunities provide upside despite recent downgrades. HOLD Technology One (ASX:TNE) A strong first-half result confirms the business is executing well, with growing recurring revenue and cash flow. However, recent share price gains limit short-term upside. James Hardie (ASX:JHX) Strategy execution in US new construction is on track, particularly in the southern states. That said, macro softness and affordability challenges persist. SELL IDP Education (ASX:IEL) Deteriorating student volumes and shifting global immigration policy have led to significant earnings downgrades. Visibility remains poor, and risks are elevated. Cettire (ASX:CTT) Weak margins, US tariff headwinds, and a soft cash position point to a challenging outlook. The path to profitability appears longer and riskier.
News.com.au
an hour ago
- News.com.au
Toowoomba home to nine of Qld's top investor hotspots
Toowoomba has been revealed as Queensland's top spot for property investment with nine of the region's suburbs making the Sunshine State's list of best regional places to invest. The new MCG Regional Movers and Investor Hotspots 2025 report analysed migration and property data to highlight regional investment opportunities amid urban exodus across Australia. Mike Mortlock, report author and MCG Quantity Surveyors managing director, said MCG's analysis indicated a clear trend – Australians were increasingly looking beyond the capital cities for property investment. 'Regional areas are not only offering better affordability but also promising rental yields and lifestyle benefits that are attracting a diverse range of buyers,' he said. The MCG analysis found the top 10 investor suburbs for each state, with shortlists created by prioritising rental yields, strong population growth and the MCG Investor Score, a composite index reflecting yield, affordability, sales and rental turnover, market liquidity and local demographic strength. The Queensland list included nine suburbs in the Toowoomba region, one in Gympie and one in Mackay. Coming in at number one was Millmerran in wider Toowoomba with a median house price of $388,500, a gross rental yield of 4.8 per cent and a MCG Investor Score of 81, which was the third highest score in the country. The report said the renal market in Millmerran remained tight, while regional industry and agriculture anchored the local economy. 'Rents have grown 7.1 per cent over the past year, and a low buy affordability (5.4 years) supports steady demand from local tenants and families,' the report said. The Clifton-Greenmount area, also in wider Toowoomba came in second with an average house price of $455,000, a gross rental yield of 5.1 per cent and a MCG Investor Score of 80. Pittsworth in the Toowoomba region was third with the median house price sitting at $615,000, gross rental yield at 4.3 per cent and the MCG Investor Score at 76. The wider Toowoomba areas of Jondaryan, Crows Nest – Rosalie, Highfields, Cambooya – Wyreema and Gowrie all made the list, along with Kilkivan in Gympie. Walkerston – Eaton in Mackay and Middle Ridge in Toowoomba tied for 10th place. Sales agent Ben Liesch, of Ray White Toowoomba said the majority of Toowoomba suburbs that made the list were on the outskirts of the city or out of town. 'These are areas are more so that entry level buying,' he said. 'There has been hot competition in those area driving prices up and there's also more people having to look out of town for rentals because of short supply.' Mr Liesch said with Toowoomba experiencing a vacancy rate below 1 per cent and a growing population, investors were keen to break into the local property market. 'We do get a lot of enquiry from out of area investors and local investors have been quite busy, too,' he said. 'We've also got a lot of buyer's agents acting on behalf of investors.' Mr Liesch said investors were particularly active in the $600,000 to $700,000 price bracket, which was considering entry level in Toowoomba. 'In an area around town (that price point) gets you a three or four-bedroom home with one to two bathrooms and a little bit older. 'In more densely populated areas, it can get you a more modern house. 'Anything below $600,000 is likely a renovator or fairly out of town.' Mr Liesch said the Toowoomba property market had been heating up since Covid with projects such as the new public hospital under construction helping to drive population growth and interest in the region. The Regional Movers and Investor Hotspots report found Queensland was a leading destination for internal migration and a welcoming environment for property investors, underpinned by population growth, ongoing infrastructure commitments and steady rental demand. 'The state's generally pro-investor policy environment, alongside fewer regulatory changes than seen in Victoria or New South Wales, continues to support positive investor sentiment, particularly in the southeast and along the coast,' Mr Mortlock said. 'However, the post-pandemic surge in house prices has softened, and competition from both owner-occupiers and migrating families is intensifying in key markets.' Mr Mortlock said the December 2024 Regional Movers Index highlighted the resilience of Queensland's regional lifestyle appeal, with the top five LGAs by share of net internal migration being Sunshine Coast (35.8%), Fraser Coast (11.7%), Gympie (7.2%), Mackay (6.2%) and Toowoomba (6.0%). 'Collectively, these five regions account for more than two-thirds of the state's net migration gains, reaffirming Queensland's status as a magnet for those seeking affordability, climate and a slower pace of life,' he said. 'The Sunshine Coast remains the state's dominant growth corridor and the most popular regional destination nationally, though its share of migration is gradually receding as new hotspots emerge.' Mr Mortlock said Fraser Coast, Gympie and Toowoomba were increasingly sought after by city leavers and established Queenslanders, drawn by lifestyle, expanding job opportunities and more attainable property markets, while traditionally resources-driven Mackay was also benefiting from diversification. QUEENSLAND TOP 10 INVESTOR SUBURBS Suburb Area Median House Price Gross Rental Yield 12m Rent Growth MCG Investor Score Millmerran $388,500 4.80% 7.10% 81 Clifton - Greenmount $455,000 5.10% 4.70% 80 Pittsworth $615,000 4.30% 7.10% 76 Jondaryan $465,000 5.00% 7.10% 75 Crows Nest - Rosalie $485,000 4.30% 7.10% 73 Highfields $879,000 3.90% 10.20% 73 Cambooya - Wyreema $613,500 4.40% 10.20% 71 Kilkivan $650,000 4.00% 4.80% 70 Gowrie (Qld) $720,000 4.40% 10.20% 70 Walkerston - Eton $620,000 4.70% 14.50% 69
