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Big news today was Spain earning a Semi Final spot in the Louis Vuitton Cup, even if they did lose to BMW Oracle. In the other matches there were some real upsets in the starts, although by the finish all the big teams had ground down the opposition to keep a clean sheet.
Jes Gram-Hansen (pictured above) made amends for his hiccup against BMW Oracle yesterday with an epic pre-start battle against James Spithill and Luna Rossa. After an early dial-up with Luna Rossa controlling the right, Gram-Hansen pulled off a ‘steel balls’ manoeuvre to seize the power of the right from Spithill.
Two more dial-ups later, with Spithill trying to bully his way back into the right side of the box, but Mascalzone sought refuge by gybing around the committee boat and making a perfect start off the right-hand end.
Spithill got a bit greedy in his bid to chase down Gram-Hansen, and started a boatlength off the line, handing an early advantage to Mascalzone. It didn’t take long for ITA 94 to grind down the opposition with equal pace and superior pointing ability, however.
Luna Rossa seemed to have it all wrapped up, and then there was a late charge from Cameron Dunn (who steers the course after Gram-Hansen does the start) to bring the chasing boat back within striking distance. Unfortunately it was all too little too late, with Luna Rossa scraping the win by 7 seconds.
If Spithill got a little greedy, Dean Barker was positively gluttonous in the pre-start against Victory Challenge. The Kiwi tried to get the hook on Magnus Holmberg from deep in the box, and seemed to forget there was a start time to think about. By the time they’d given up on the hook, they tacked off to the right and started almost 25 seconds late across the line, while the Swedes started on the gun.
Tony Rae, who does runners on the Kiwi boat, commented: "Deano wasn’t very happy with himself today but it was a judgement issue and he realised that the timing was out and it put us a long way back, but we chipped away to get as close as possible at the top mark. I’m sure the Spanish weren’t very happy with us with that start."
Victory did a good job of holding off the Kiwis until the Swedes gybed off into the middle of the run, with Barker holding out to the right-hand side. The Swedes handed the lead to the Kiwis at that point, NZL 92 enjoying the better breeze, and once Barker rounded the leeward gate 10 seconds ahead, that was the race in the bag.
Still, some hard questions for Luna Rossa and New Zealand where time-on-distance in the pre-start is concerned. It’s hard to recall Chris Dickson having made those sort of mistakes over the past few weeks.
I managed to get a word with Peter Isler about BMW Oracle’s stunning start against Mascalzone Latino yesterday.
Click here for the Peter Isler interview…
And here’s Jes Gram-Hansen’s view on the same start, a rare aberration from one of the big discoveries of this America’s Cup. At 35 years old, he’s not exactly a young gun like the 27-year-old Spithill, but he’s every bit as confident, aggressive and consistent as the young Australian.
Click here for the Jes Gram-Hansen interview…
A fantastic day’s racing in Valencia to conclude a Round Robin that at one time seemed like it would never end. So what did we learn from today? Well, for starters, that none of the helmsmen in the leading teams are infallible.
It’s easy to overlook the fact that Chris Dickson, with all the other responsibilities he faces as head of BMW Oracle Racing, remains one of the best starters in the business. He has looked very consistent in the pre-starts. In the big decider match to determine who would win Round Robin One, he had Dean Barker and the Kiwis wrapped up like a kipper. Dickson saw a moment to close the Kiwis out of the start and put BMW Oracle at a massive early advantage.
However, Dickson got greedy and in his eagerness to post a ‘kill’, lost control of the situation and let Barker off the hook as NZL 92 sailed off to an unexpected early lead. However, the fact that the Kiwis ended up winning the start shouldn’t distract from the fact that in both pre-starts today the New Zealand boat looked in all sorts of trouble.
Magnus Holmberg can take credit for winning the pre-start against Barker in the match earlier this afternoon, although it was another case of the Kiwis wriggling out of trouble and finding better breeze on the right. Barker has been taking a lot of flak in some corners of the media for his inconsistent starting performances and rightly so, on the strength of what we saw today.
James Spithill, helmsman of Luna Rossa, is seen by some as the Russell Coutts of the next generation. Widely acknowledged as one of the most aggressive but controlled match racers in the game, we didn’t see the best of the young Aussie in the Italian team’s starts against Mascalzone Latino and Desafio Espanol – even if Luna Rossa ended up as the only team to win both matches today. Again, when analysing starting performance, Luna Rossa's results flatter to deceive.
Arguably the star of the pre-starts has been Jes Gram Hansen, whose roughing up of Luna Rossa today put Mascalzone Latino at a significant advantage on the first beat. It was unfortunate that Mascalzone could not hold on to that lead until the end of the race, but that is no reflection on the up-and-coming Dane’s starting ability.
It seemed that in today’s fickle and unpredictable conditions, winning or losing the start had little bearing on the eventual outcome of the race. There were numerous passing opportunities, and so it was a big day for the windspotters at the top of the rigs, sniffing out the best puffs of breeze wafting down the track. Desafio’s second helmsman, Jesper Radich, made the comment during his guest spot on America’s Cup Radio today that 90% of teams who lead round the first mark go on to win the match. But in these unstable conditions, raw statistics appear to count for little.
The unsteady breezes have certainly added to the excitement of Round Robin One, but have made it less easy to discern any real boatspeed differences between the top teams. Desafio Espanol won a drag race off the start line with BMW Oracle and beat the American boat fair and square, so there appears little wrong with the Spanish package. The Italian teams on the other hand seem more reliant on some decent breeze to get their boats up to race-winning pace.
Top Italian team Luna Rossa hasn’t looked entirely convincing and yet at the end of this intriguing first phase they lie second in the rankings. So, not so bad after all, perhaps? Along with Luna Rossa, the Spanish are the team in the ascendant. Confidence will be blooming, while in the New Zealand camp there will be a feeling that things just aren’t clicking. Before this season, most pundits would have put the Kiwis just ahead of BMW Oracle as the favourite to race Alinghi later this summer. After Round Robin One, however, the Challenger of Record is looking the most likely to front up against the Swiss.
The big teams are all facing a relatively straightforward start to Round Robin Two, with the exception of Emirates Team New Zealand’s draw against Mascalzone Latino, who claimed a Kiwi scalp in Round Robin One. It will be vital for Kiwi confidence to get the better of Jes Gram Hansen and the Latin Rascals at the start. If not, then the pressure will only continue to build on the New Zealanders.
So, in the battle of the Russell Coutts protégés, it's Jes Gram-Hansen 1, Dean Barker 0.
Everyone knows that Barker grew up in the shadow of Coutts, and became his regular sparring partner at Team New Zealand for the 2000 defence of the Cup. Lesser known is the Danish match racer Gram-Hansen's involvement with Coutts, but Gram-Hansen has done a lot of World Match Race Tour events as the Kiwi's tactician.
Gram-Hansen was already a well-established match racer in his own right, but his performance had taken a bit of a downturn until Coutts came along a couple of years ago and invited Gram-Hansen and his Danish team mates to do some Tour events with him. Not only did this provide the Dane with a chance to observe the master at work, but it also gave the 35-year-old his break into America's Cup campaigning, as a meeting with Vincenzo Onorato led to his appointment as starting helmsman for Mascalzone Latino-Capitalia Team.
As we saw yesterday against Emirates Team New Zealand, Mascalzone Latino have addressed criticism that they are a good fleet racing team but a pretty poor match racing team (which they were in the 2005 season). Things improved a little in 2006 with the Italians' acceptance that they would have to employ a non-Latin match race specialist.
Last year Gram-Hansen's aggressive pre-start manoeuvres put the Latin Rascals in the winning position against superior teams on a number of occasions. However they didn't always have the boatspeed to convert those winning moves to victories on the scoreboard.
The team has made another step change for 2007. Now that Harry Dunning and the boatbuilders have delivered a strong package with new boat ITA-99, when Gram-Hansen hands over to chief helmsman Flavio Favini the Italians look like the real deal. Not only can they win starts, but they have the pace and confidence to win races.
The victory against the Kiwis was no fluke, so expect more Latin fireworks later in this Round Robin.
Big news today was Spain earning a Semi Final spot in the Louis Vuitton Cup, even if they did lose to BMW Oracle. In the other matches there were some real upsets in the starts, although by the finish all the big teams had ground down the opposition to keep a clean sheet.
