Team New Zealand’s ‘frustrating’ first win in America’s Cup opener in Barcelona
Friday, 23 August 2024
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Team New Zealand got the point but missed valuable experience after arch-rival Luna Rossa retired crippled from their first encounter in Barcelona.
“I'm sure they'll be gutted likewise that they didn't manage to get that race practice under their belt,” the defender’s skipper Peter Burling told Stuff. “But, all in all, it was great to get the campaign’s official racing underway.”
The race had barely begun, with Team New Zealand narrowly ahead, when Luna Rossa heeled over and dipped its bow, after an electronic failure shut down the boat controls.
“We were setting up for a real nice head-to-head battle with our Kiwi mates, so that was a shame,” Luna Rossa helmsman Jimmy Spithill said.
“Probably frustrating for both because we've both had some awesome races over our America's Cup careers and certainly as a team with the last Cup match.”
Spithill said he was glad it happened in the preliminary regatta because it doesn’t count towards any points in next week’s challenger series.
“We lost all electrical [power]. In these boats, the only thing that works when that happens is the steering wheel. You really have nothing,” Spithill said.
The Kiwi defenders sailed back to base, leaving the Italians to repair the fault in time for a comfortable win over mistake-ridden Orient Express.
The other expected close match was also disappointing, with INEOS Britannia getting the first cross ahead of American Magic, only to watch them then sail by to win comfortably.
“We were a little bit frustrated with that,” Sir Ben Ainslie, the team owner and helmsman, told Stuff.
“It felt like we needed to derive some more speed out of the boat and we'll get back in the shed, look at the data and figure out how we can do that,” he said.
For the Americans it was a welcome recovery from the previous day’s nosedive which saw it retire from a practice race with a bruised crew and a lot of water in the hull.
The team’s co-helmsman, Tom Slingsby, was playing down any significance of the pace which left Ainslie saying his team just “just didn’t have the legs”.
“We've shown that when we sail well we've got a competitive boat, we've got a fast boat, and we can win races out here,” he said, adding that different conditions will change the relative performance of teams.
Slingsby named Team New Zealand and Luna Rossa as two teams to watch, but told Stuff he wasn’t trying to position the Americans as underdogs.
“I mean there's been a few practice racing days here in the last couple of weeks, and if you saw that I think you'd say that we're definitely not the top contender,” he said.
“We've had a lot of losses in those practice races, we lost to INEOS 2-0 actually on the day, maybe a week or 10 days ago, so to turn it around today, that's good.
“We're definitely not the favourites, but we're chipping away.”
The honour of winning the first official race in the new generation AC75 monohulls went to Alinghi Red Bull Racing, which sailed tidily against France’s Orient Express.
The helmsman Maxime Bachelin called the race “awesome” and was happy with his crew of largely young sailors.
“Every day we are going on the water, going against the others, we learn so much, but it's still a long way to go to get 100% out of the boat,” he said.
The French incurred penalties in the start box of both their races, and that first error let the Swiss build a lead of about 13 seconds and maintain it for much of the race.
“We did too many mistakes today but there is also plenty of good things, the boat is fast, we had some good manoeuvres, we had some good comebacks, we just need to avoid the major error or the mistakes,” the co-helmsman Quentin Delapierre told Stuff.
Orient Express’ second encounter, against Luna Rossa, saw it penalised twice in the start box, and had to recross the start line, as well as making a mess of two manoeuvres, leaving the Italians to cruise to victory.
“We just need to sail in the simplest way, it was too hard to do these two tacks and we just put ourselves in a really bad position before the entry,” said Delapierre.
The day means four teams have scored one point in the Preliminary Regatta, Alinghi RBR, Team New Zealand, American Magic and Luna Rossa.
On day two, Team New Zealand will encounter INEOS Britannia.
Louis Vuitton Preliminary Regatta, day one results:
Race one: Alinghi beat Orient Express
Race two: Team NZ beat Luna Rossa
Race three: American Magic beat Britannia
Race four: Luna Rossa beat Orient Express
Standings: Team New Zealand 1, Alinghi 1, American Magic 1, Luna Rossa 1, Britannia 0, Orient Express 0.