skip to main |
skip to sidebar
After so much promise in the fleet racing of Louis Vuitton Act 13, +39 Challenge really haven’t impressed during the Round Robins. The new Version 5 rig that was brought down by Germany during the fleet racing, broken into three pieces, was a massive setback for the team.
Every rig in the fleet is designed to twist for improved aerodynamics, and with the +39 rig patched up for the Round Robins, Iain Percy says it has lost that twisting ability, and the boatspeed is suffering accordingly.
However, today the team finally posted its first win from Round Robin Two, and against the giant killers on Shosholoza. It was all won on the start, with Iain Percy rolling off the line faster and directly ahead of the downspeed RSA 83. From there it was a calm and controlled covering job by Percy and tactician Ian Walker.
In other matches, the team’s lack of practice has really let them down. Today they sailed like a Semi Final candidate - although of course for +39 that horse bolted long ago.
Maybe Walker’s beard was the winning factor. After all, fellow Brit and Olympic medallist Ben Ainslie never shaves once an important regatta is underway, and it doesn’t seem to do him any harm.
Apparently Walker’s reasons for growing a beard are more out of a desire for anonymity, however. “I’m growing a beard so nobody recognises me,” said Walker this evening, embarrassed at +39’s lack of performance until today. “It’s not coming off yet, we’ve still got to beat Germany and China Team!”
As teams begin to fall by the wayside on the road to the 32nd America’s Cup, it’s great news to hear that some are already beginning to make plans for the next time. Team Shosholoza may have missed the cut for the final four in the Louis Vuitton Cup, but the South Africans have covered themselves in glory, and syndicate head Captain Salvatore Sarno said they would be back.
“Most probably Defender Alinghi will win again and if they do,” said the Captain. “It is not final but 99 per cent sure, the next Cup will be in Valencia. If this is the case I hope that we will be able to launch RSA 101 by February next year and have it ready for the first Acts in May. My plan is that we have a two-boat programme.”
One team that we can be fairly sure won’t be making a re-appearance at the 33rd Cup is +39 Challenge. If anyone was in any doubt about the team’s future, jib trimmer Stefano Rizzi (pictured above) left us in no doubt at the media zone. It’s well known that there is no love lost between the sailors and their management, but no one has voiced it quite as explicitly as Rizzi.
“I would never have thought that at the age of 40 I would be involved in such a badly run project, but this campaign will give me the drive to do another one, because it can’t be worse than how it went here, it’s impossible. This is the America’s Cup, and you have to do it well, like in any great sporting event.
“I don’t want them [the +39 management] ever to get involved again. Everything was wrong, from the poor fundraising to the lack of organisation. The +39 project was a blueprint for how not to do the America’s Cup. This project was on the wrong track from the very beginning. We have been dealing with people with not enough experience and too much arrogance. They didn’t want to learn from the people who had experience and there was a lack of humility on their part.
“It’s a pity, because the sailing crew is excellent. I wanted to quit the America’s Cup after this edition, but now, to wash away the dirt from this campaign, I must do another one, even if I don’t get paid for it!”
Victory Challenge seem to have been one of the underperformers of the Round Robins to date, not to mention their woeful catalogue of sail-handling errors in the fleet racing of Louis Vuitton Act 13. Yet here they are in 5th place on the leaderboard, so there is still much for the Swedes to play for.
How many more Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free cards will come their way though, such as the one handed to them by Shosholoza yesterday? The spinnaker pole breakage was another heartbreaking moment for the South Africans who, while they have great boatspeed and are sailing tactically very well, are being let down either by ripping spinnakers or snapping poles.
These can be the hardest defeats to take, as skipper Mark Sadler's comment indicates: "It is so disappointing, you can't imagine. Have a second spinnaker pole on board would be too heavy, so what can we do? We didn't make any mistakes at all during the race but we had some strange manoeuvres. All was going so well, we are fast and good. And then once again a material problem. When it happened I thought, 'Oh no, not again!' We have to keep going of course, but this is really hard to digest."
It all just seems to be slipping away for Shosholoza after such a strong start to the Round Robin campaign. A Semi Finals spot now looks a long way away, with Desafio Espanol displaying the sort of form that suggests they are not going to relinquish 4th spot without a big fight.
What the smaller teams must keep on telling themselves is that anything can happen in these conditions. Covering your opponent in such fickle breeze can be a fool's game, with the greater priority being to tap into the best power supply up the course. Gavin Brady's comment after BMW Oracle's race against Germany shows how weather-focused the American team was yesterday: "Our weather team told us there would be a pretty big right hand shift, and whoever was in front would probably win the race.
"So the mentality had to shift from it being a four-leg race to being a one-leg race, and we knew we had to maximise everything, make sure we had our best sail up, and win the start and the first windshift. So there was a little bit of heat on board for that first leg. But our weather team predicted it dead right – it became a one-way race course."
One of the most intriguing of today's matches looks the line-up between Victory and Luna Rossa. The Swedes have proven themselves well capable of giant-killing in the past, and Luna Rossa's starting has been off-key of late, so Victory have to believe they can win this confrontation - without the sort of luck that they relied on yesterday.
And then there is the prospect of Mascalzone Latino against Emirates Team New Zealand, two teams that for different reasons have their backs against the wall. For the Kiwis it is a matter of pride and team morale to keep Mascalzone at bay, while for the Italians it is a matter of staying in the hunt for the last four.
While there's not much point in Areva Challenge crying over spilt milk, they must feel a little hard done by after being ruled as Did Not Finish from yesterday's finish line drama against Team Shosholoza.
I'm sure that race officer Peter 'Luigi' Reggio and Bryan Willis's jury are absolutely correct in having determined that Areva's mast tip never recrossed to the course side of the line, and rules is rules. But what a harsh way to lose a point. Natural justice would suggest that if you re-round the finish buoy without hitting it, then that should be sufficient to offload the penalty.
The counter-argument could run that if you don't want to take the risks inherent with using the finish buoy as the place to offload the penalty, then Areva could have taken the 270 degree turn further up the course. Of course that wouldn't have won them the race either because the finish between Shosholoza and the French was close enough as it was, let alone trying to do a penalty before the finish and then sailing the final few metres downspeed with just mainsail and genoa up.
So Areva were damned if they did and damned if they didn't. In the modern media world where audiences demand instant decisions, however, doesn't it make sense to revise this rule rather than have this overnight delay until a jury can make the final decision? Meanwhile, next time Areva have to take a penalty, they should send a man aloft with a very long plumbline hanging from the top of the mast. That way they'll know for sure whether they were clear or not!
Well, knock me down with a feather! When Mark Lagesse said Shosholoza would be disappointed if they didn't beat Luna Rossa, that just seemed like the usual bravado you get from sailors after a good day on the water. Apologies, Mark, I should never have doubted you!
The South Africans continue to shock and surprise, while Luna Rossa becomes more and more of an enigma. No sooner have they been whopped by the little people (in financial terms, anyway), than they hold BMW Oracle to one of the most tense and thrilling matches yet seen.
We may only have had three days' racing so far, but every day has produced a big upset. Long may it continue.
Shosholoza's navigator Mark Lagesse revealed just how far Shosholoza's ambitions extend now, with this comment after today's racing. "The only boat that is considerably quicker than ours is Team New Zealand. Tomorrow we've got Luna Rossa and if we beat them I won't be surprised - and if we lose I'll be disappointed." Such a statement of intent would have seemed laughable two and a half years ago when the South Africans muddled their way around the course at Louis Vuitton Act 1 in Marseilles. Thirteen regattas later, and the Africans are a real threat to the big guns.
Well, when the racing happens in Valencia, it's actually pretty good! For a while it looked like we were about to witness an upset of even greater proportions than Mascalzone's scalping of the Kiwis two days ago. When Shosholoza pulled ahead of BMW Oracle on the first lap of their match today, every neutral observer - and quite a few besides - were willing the South Africans to beat the Americans.
However, when the Shosholoza crew fluffed their spinnaker drop at the leeward gate, Chris Dickson's team was ready to pounce and they sailed in typically controlled and ruthless fashion to overhaul the underdogs. That's tactician Gavin Brady doing all the concentrating in the photo above, with navigator Peter Isler to his left and the iceman Dicko on the wheel.
At least in the Desafio v Areva match the underdog French team managed to hold on to their lead and stick one on the Spanish team who have such high hopes of making the Louis Vuitton Semi-Finals.
For all the fact that we've only had two days' racing in a seven days of competition, this first week says so much about the Swiss management of the Cup, both good and bad. Perhaps someone should have listened more carefully to Russell Coutts when he suggested Cascais on Portugal's Atlantic seaboard would be the better sailing venue. Or maybe we've just been really unlucky with the breeze.
Valencia is known (by some) as the Fremantle of the Mediterranean, but the supposedly reliable thermal effect has been in short supply to date. Chief race officer Peter 'Luigi' Reggio expects the situation to improve the further we get into the summer, when the mountains further inland can be expected to heat up properly and start to suck in a decent sea breeze. But that doesn't really start happening until late June when the event is all but over. That might be fine for the America's Cup but it's not much fun for the challengers in the LV Cup.
You could surmise that this was all part of Alinghi's cunning plan, to have the challengers wallowing around in no wind for two months before the Cup, but that would be a conspiracy theory too far! After all, Alinghi's second boat, SUI-100, has barely had time to get wet, let alone test the 'can they, can't they' canting keel.
Looking on the bright side, at least these light breezes are producing some real upsets in the competition. The 'Big Four' are not looking nearly as impregnable as they have in seasons past. And for that, Alinghi and ACM deserve real credit for introducing the Louis Vuitton Acts. Would Shosholoza have led BMW Oracle so confidently in the race today, even if they didn't end up winning? Would Mascalzone have trounced the Kiwis last Friday if we hadn't had the 13 Act regattas? I don't think so.
The naysayers (largely from the other side of the pond who still think the America's Cup was named after their great nation, and hanker for a return to those halcyon days in Newport RI) have long gone silent over this particular criticism of ACM. Whatever you think of the choice of Valencia as a reliable sailing venue, you can't fault the Acts and the implementation of the Version 5 design rule. Both have conspired to produce what is set to be a tighter challenger series than we have ever witnessed before. That's bad news for the Kiwis, but it's great for us sailing fans.
After so much promise in the fleet racing of Louis Vuitton Act 13, +39 Challenge really haven’t impressed during the Round Robins. The new Version 5 rig that was brought down by Germany during the fleet racing, broken into three pieces, was a massive setback for the team. 
