We are very excited that Chris Bake (F 77-82), co-owner of the Sail GP Emirates GBR team alongside Olympic gold medalist Sir Ben Ainslie, will be joining our London Drinks event this year to share stories about his team’s thrilling treble win in 2025. Emirates GBR won the Grand Finale in Abu Dhabi, topped the season standings on points as well as winning the Impact League for Social and Environmental Performance, the first team ever to do so.

So, how did Chris end up becoming a dominant force in the emergent field of SailGP, essentially the Formula 1 of sailing, a sport that has only been in existence for five years?

Chris has an international background; born in Thailand to parents from New Zealand and the Netherlands, he grew up in Spain from where he attended Bradfield in the late 1970s before he continuing his studies in the USA including at the McCombs School of Business, University of Texas.

He started sailing as a young child with his father and brother but credits Bradfield as the place where he learned to sailing properly, a passion that he has maintained throughout his 30 year career in the Energy sector. Rising from trader to Director of Vitol and Chairman of Vitol subsidiaries Vivo and VTTI, he helped the company to grow into the world’s largest independent oil trader. Chris’s success in business has allowed him to indulge his passion for competitive sailing. Helm for ‘Team Aqua’ in the RC44 Cup series, he has raced competitively since 2007 and has been described as the ‘dominant force’ in that series. 

His reflection in the “McCombs Made” podcast in February 2025 encapsulates his love of the sport “Most of the sailing sport is a team sport, [a] dynamic about being able to not only extract the best from yourself but those around you, to figure out how to make a boat move through the water efficiently and how to read the wind and the waves and the current. … That is really exciting, and every day is different.”

In 2019 the Rolex SailGP Championships were born, as a means of showcasing cutting-edge sailing technology manned by elite crews. The races were designed to be short and fast paced to make them more spectator friendly. The boats are crewed by national teams racing identical high-performance F50 foiling catamarans over a race series of multiple grand-prix events around the world. Each race accrues points towards an overall seasonal championship. SailGP succeeded in winning this championship in the 2024/25 series.

Chris was the first to invest in the Emirates GBR team with Sir Ben Ainslie, making it the first privately owned team in SailGP. This year they have been joined by Mislaid Capital, a London based Private Fund, encouraged by the commercial growth of SailGP alongside its focus on climate action.

Chris has accumulated a wealth of knowledge about the world’s evolving power needs during his career and pivoted this into identifying opportunities for sustainability and renewable energy, where Chris’s passion equals his passion for sailing. It is perhaps no surprise therefore that the Emirates GBR team win the Impact League for Social and Environmental performance, which rewards team for taking action to protect the planet as well as making sailing more inclusive.

Chris maintains a close link with the College and most recently supported the St Andrew’s Project which saw the conversion of the former parish church into the beautiful St Andrew’s Study Centre.

We look forward to learning more at Chris’s talk in May at Summer Drinks, book your ticket by registering HERE.