"Do or die", "make or break". Before the fourth day of racing, not only the fans in San Francisco realised that it was almost all or nothing for the US defenders after the hail of defeats of the past few days. After pulling their "postponement card" on Tuesday to avoid having to sail race six and "regroup as a group", CEO Russell Coutts and the team pulled the next interesting card out of their sleeve on Thursday: Noble joker Ben Ainslie. The four-time gold medallist and most successful Olympic sailor in history not surprisingly replaced veteran John Kostecki. With this change of personnel, "Big Ben" Ainslie had little to lose, but rather everything to gain. He was not granted it.
After a casual start, in which New Zealand's helmsman Dean Barker misjudged and, in his own words, "totally embarrassed" himself, and a lead of up to twelve seconds, it looked for a short time on Thursday in the sixth race as if the Americans might be able to stand up to their challengers a little after all. But it didn't take Emirates Team New Zealand long to make up ground after the hoped-for split, which was soon elegantly brought about, and wrestle down the Americans in a breathless duel. Once they had overtaken the Americans, the now almost familiar picture emerged: the "Barker boys" pulled away metre by metre and crossed the finish line with a 47-second lead.
The presenters of the live programme keep asking themselves and their guests what the Americans could possibly do to herald their resurrection. Commentator Gary Jobson states: "There's no rabbit out of the hat in sight."
In the second race of the day, Dean Barker seemed to have finally tired of his recent too often lost starts and acted more courageously. His tactician Ray Davies had already announced it during the break between the two races when he was asked whether Team New Zealand was deliberately being so conservative at the starts to avoid risking any damage: "No, not at all! We would love to smash them." More focussed and with perfect timing, the Kiwis won the start of the seventh race over the course between the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz, crossing the line almost simultaneously with the starting gun. The perfect timing enabled a straightforward start-to-finish victory. Larry Ellison's elite team could only sail behind without a chance.
The New Zealanders demonstrate their superiority in this seventh encounter with perfect tacks, a tactically flawless performance and outstanding speed. As the speedy "Aotearoa" rounds the last windward mark, the Americans are not even in sight. The lead of the Kiwis with their 56-year-old grinder, guru, driver and team boss Grant Dalton on board has long been more than a kilometre. "They don't seem to have an answer to the Kiwis' speed," says one of the reporters, "it must be devastating for them." The demoralising pattern of the New Zealanders: "We catch you because we can!"
With a budget around three times larger than that of Emirates Team New Zealand, all the technological possibilities, sufficient preparation time and a racing team full of sailing stars, the defenders now have to ask themselves, among other things, why they let the Kiwis with their 60 million euro budget show them up like this. The questions that Larry Ellison might ask his CEO Coutts are unlikely to be charming.
The daily summary
Tatjana Pokorny
Sports reporter
