Some bathe in champagne, others in mockery, pity and anger: the favourites from New Zealand have prevailed in the prelude to the America's Cup off Auckland. Emirates Team New Zealand sailed to a 5-1 victory on Saturday with helmsman Peter Burling at the three-day Prada ACWS Auckland Regatta. The Kiwis used the first test of strength in the wake of the pre-regattas of the World Series, which had all been cancelled due to the coronavirus, to show their muscles. The one defeat suffered on the first day against American Magic was taken in their stride by the hosts, who once again showed what is trumps in the battle for the silver jug: a fast boat and few handling errors when dealing with the new, obviously very demanding monohull prototypes of the AC75 class. The British showed what doesn't help: Their boat looks flightless and reminds many observers of the frustrating time the team led by skipper Sir Ben Ainslie had off Bermuda in 2017. The team already had no chance in the 35th America's Cup with a boat that was too slow. Now, four weeks before the start of the challenger round from 15 January, they are once again on the brink of the America's Cup abyss with six sometimes pitiful defeats in a row.
The first and only regatta of the Prada America's Cup World Series has shown beyond these two plus and minus poles that the other two challengers - the Italian Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli Team as Challenger of Record, who contributed to the rules and thus had a definite advantage in the design development work, and Terry Hutchinson's Team American Magic with the New Zealand helmsman Dean Barker, who has been conspicuously strong in his home territory on an American Cup yacht - at least have good potential. The last race of this first series is representative of the current picture: The Kiwis beat the Italians (3:3), who finished third behind the Americans (4:2), by 16 seconds at the finish line, popping the champagne corks and making their fans cheer in the most beautiful summer weather. No victory was granted to the British, who were aggressive in some of the starting phases, but had already provided a fitting symbolic image for the almost desperate situation on the first day, when "Britannia" had to be manoeuvred into the harbour with the utmost care by two escort boats.
On Saturday, the first decisions were made at the pre-match in Auckland. The winners were given a well-deserved champagne shower at the end
Ahead of Sunday's one-day Prada Christmas Race, in which the Kiwis are expected to make short work of the Brits in the semi-finals while the Americans and Italians could go toe-to-toe, the British team surprisingly achieved the highest speed of the day on Saturday with 43.3 knots. New Zealand's "Te Rehutai" came close with 42.6 knots. "Luna Rossa" reached a top speed of 41.2 knots, Patriot 37.5 knots.
In the press conference after the race, 49er Olympic champion and Cup defender Peter Burling categorised Saturday's races in light winds: "Today we were at the lower end of the wind range we agreed to sail in. We saw really big gains and losses, which made the racing difficult. We really enjoyed the challenge. And we were blown away by how many Kiwis turned up to see us today and how many boats gathered around the race course."
Jimmy Spithill had this to say about steering in rotation with Francesco Bruni and the day's performance of his Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli team: "It was a bit patchy today. The wind was strong enough at every start, but it wasn't always like that on the course. The guys who managed it better won the race. Francesco and I discuss the strategy before the start. There are certain times when you are the helmsman and make the decisions and the other guy takes care of trimming the foils. This process is fun. It's something that's never been done before in the America's Cup. So it's a really cool experience. And it felt good to get off the line well both times."
"American Magic" helmsman Dean Barker, whose team made life difficult for the Kiwis on Saturday with a strong start before "Patriot" fell off the foils in the flat conditions, described how quickly the beautiful game on the foils can be over in light wind racing: "It was nice to have a little advantage over the Kiwis at the beginning, but if you fall off the foils, that's game over. These boats are demanding at the bottom end of the wind." Sir Ben Ainslie has probably secretly wished that his team could even come close to the level of the other challengers. However, the Brits currently seem further away from this than ever before in the almost 170 years of Cup history, in which they have never been able to win "their" trophy. At the end of three demoralising days, the four-time Olympic champion and America's Cup winner from 2013 (then with Larry Ellisson's Oracle Team USA) was forced to put a brave face on the depressing game and praise his opponents: "The other three teams are doing a better job than us. All the boats stopped at some point today. Some more often than others." With the last gallows-humour sentence, Ainslie made the small press crowd in Auckland and the viewers on the screens laugh, even if he himself probably felt more like crying.
The 43-year-old answered the burning question of all observers as to whether the king of Olympic sailors still sees an opportunity for decisive improvements as follows: "We want to be more competitive than we are at the moment. We are at the cutting edge of technology. All the teams have fantastic designers and engineers and we are not where we need to be at the moment. But that's why we want to compete in this arena: We want to push ourselves in the battle with the best, we need to learn, understand, develop and make that leap. There are a number of key areas where we are a little bit lacking. This event is actually more than an incredible opportunity for us to measure ourselves against these teams and realise 'okay, we have some serious issues'. We still have a bit of time to turn this around and will make the most of this opportunity." However, Ainslie described changes to the extreme and much-discussed deep-draught "skeg" hull of the "Britannia" as hardly possible. The comments on the British situation on social networks were correspondingly clear. Ainslie had already publicly identified who he considered to be complicit in the dilemma a few days ago when he accused the New Zealand Cup defenders of withholding important technical information about a key control system that is installed on all boats as part of the OneDesign regulations.
Tatjana Pokorny
Sports reporter
