Is Torben just too Nice?

Is Torben Grael just too nice for match racing? In the second cross of today’s match the Brazilian Magician on Luna Rossa had his foot on the Kiwi boat’s throat. He should have finished off the job, by tacking hard on the Kiwis’ leeward bow, forcing them off to the left again.

By his own admission in this evening’s press conference, Grael thought the breeze had already gone as left as it was going to, so he wanted to protect the right. Maybe by tacking far to leeward of NZL 92 he wanted to encourage the Kiwis to follow him over to the right and fall into Italian bad air as the breeze shifted right. That is the only possible defence for Grael’s unconvincing tactics.

As it was, the breeze went further left than Grael had expected, allowing Dean Barker not only to live on ITA 94’s hip but to move forwards and climb out from there into a controlling position which he would never relinquish. Not for the first time this series, the Kiwis couldn’t quite believe their luck, as ETNZ windspotter Adam Beashel commented afterwards: “We were surprised they tacked to leeward there, it’s not what I’d have chosen, but that was their thinking…” The result was a 52-second win to the Kiwis, who used marginally better boatspeed to extend once they were in front.

Poor old Torben really didn’t want to be sitting in that press conference this evening. Every time he finished answering a question he put the microphone back down like a hot potato. And at the end of the conference, he couldn’t get out of there quick enough. No wonder, as he was asked more or less the same question four or five times. We were no more enlightened as to why he chose to tack so unaggressively under the Kiwis than before the press conference had begun.

Here’s an example. Asked if it would have been possible to tack closer under the Kiwi bow, he replied: “We definitely could, but we felt we were on a leftie and wanted to defend the right side which we thought was good, and take the position which we thought was safe. They hung out with a nice leftie with pressure and they made a huge gain in a short period. From then on it was quite difficult for us to come back because we weren’t in a strong position to do so.

“It’s hard to predict those things - the right came, but it came late and we couldn’t benefit from it. Knowing what happened now, I would go closer, but it’s a hard situation there, you have to decide right then on the information you have, and with the information I had I felt I was doing the right thing.”

You can be sure that if the tables were turned, Terry Hutchinson wouldn’t have been nearly so gentlemanly. He would have tacked on the opposition’s face and bounced them away. You can’t fault Torben Grael’s record in fleet racing – five Olympic medals says it all – and normally no one can read the wind better than this man. However, in the past week, Grael’s legendary windspotting skills have eluded him on a number of occasions.

Luna Rossa won the roll of the dice off the start line today, picking the right side and moving to a four-boatlength lead at the first cross. Fair enough, it worked on that occasion. But if the Kiwis had found themselves in that position it would have been game, set and match right there. Using good old, hard-arsed match racing skills.

In James Spithill, the Italians have one of the sharpest shooters in town, but Torben’s softly-softly tactics are not giving Spithill the ammunition to hurt the Kiwis. When the Kiwis have the faster boat, there’s even more of an imperative to fix bayonets and get stuck into some hand-to-hand fighting. Time for Torben to turn nasty.

Luna Rossa wrong to give Kiwis the right

It was surprising how easily Luna Rossa gave up their starboard entry advantage in today’s opening match of the Louis Vuitton Cup Finals. Dean Barker can’t have believed his luck as he went into an early dial-up expecting a full-on punch-up with James Spithill, only to find the Italian boat quite happy to concede the right in favour of the left-hand side of the start.

In the last minute it looked as though Spithill wanted to get eleventh-hour aggressive with Barker, but if that was the case, the Australian left it too late to inflict any damage on the Kiwis up near the committee boat. Come start time, it was NZL 92 that was fully up to speed on the right, ITA 94 still recovering from two downspeed tacks and yet to wind up to full pace.

The Italians accelerated well and looked fast enough, but Torben Grael never found that left-hand breeze which he had been banking on. “It wasn’t a normal situation synoptically but we expected to start on the left, and on a split wanted the right. We were happy with the start, but it went further right than we expected, and so did the pressure. We gained a little back on starboard but close to the top mark there was an extra ‘rightie’ and that was quite painful to us.”

So for once, unlike in the Semi Final matches against BMW Oracle, the Italians’ nose for the best breeze eluded them and it was the Kiwi weather team and afterguard that called it right – wanting the right, winning the right and proving that right was the right place to be. However, despite a 10-degree shift in the Kiwis’ favour during that first beat, the Italians kept a very tight game. The biggest delta of the whole match was 12 seconds at the first mark, and at the finish the Kiwis won by just 8 seconds. Today's race revealed very little difference in performance between two boats that have surprisingly different hull shapes.

Although boatspeed differences were almost imperceptible, it did look like Luna Rossa might have the smallest of edges upwind in the 12 to 13 knot breezes. While the New Zealand team sailed impeccably, there must be a slight fear that the Italian boat has the edge in the classic sea breeze conditions that we saw today.

In some informal but intense racing against Alinghi two days ago, the Kiwis again were holding the right-hand side during a right-shifting breeze but the Swiss team was able to match or gain on the New Zealand boat from the disadvantaged side of the beat. Then again, both teams were using their older boats, SUI 91 and NZL 84 respectively, so it’s difficult to read too much into these test matches. However, there are signs that the Kiwi boats are fast, but perhaps not quite fast enough. Lighter breezes would suit ETNZ better.

What would have come as some relief to the challengers is that while Alinghi’s raw boatspeed looked very good, Defender boathandling looked very shoddy. The Swiss will have to up their game for the America’s Cup, because the boathandling that we saw from the Kiwi and Italian teams today was excellent.

BMW Oracle eclipsed by Luna Rossa again

A month or so ago, we media types were talking about how there was not one - but two places up for grabs in the Semi Finals, such was the perceived weakness of Luna Rossa at the time. Word on the street was that the Italians were struggling in pre-Act 13 training against the likes of Areva Challenge. The question was which of the 2nd tier teams would be joining the dead certs – BMW Oracle and New Zealand – as the other two teams in the Semis.

How wrong could we be? Now 3-1 up against BMW Oracle after another intriguing match in steady moderate breezes, they appear to be the equal of Americans in almost every department. Even the superior downwind speed of USA 98 was not in evidence today, with Dickson throwing everything but the kitchen sink at James Spithill down the final run but failing to unsettle the Italians who held their nerve for a 23-second victory.

It’s difficult to criticise a team that has just won, especially when the team tactician has five Olympic medals hanging around his neck, but why did Torben Grael put a small but comfortable lead at risk up the final beat by allowing yet another of these massive splits to develop?

We’ve seen some big separation between these two teams over the past week, but nothing like the 2.7 kilometre split that we saw today, with Grael going right and Gavin Brady taking the left. When they came back together at the middle of the top of the course, the Italians had gained one, maybe two boatlengths on the Americans. All that risk for that?

Then again, the Italians did round the final mark sufficiently far ahead not to be overly troubled by BMW Oracle down the last run, and the Luna Rossa gang looked more than a little happy when they crossed the finish line. In fact, maybe a little too happy. As Tom Ehman comments in his BMW Oracle blog: “At dock-in just now, the Luna Rossa fans next door worked a bit too much at being boisterous and exhuberant. I think that gives us all more motivation to go after them even harder tomorrow. No doubt we will come out swinging.” You’re doing well, Luna Rossa, but you haven’t won it yet. The Italians need to keep a bottle on their emotions for a few days longer.

Meanwhile, it was back to business as usual for Dean Barker and the Kiwis, after a solid win against the Spanish. Actually it was a pretty special pre-start by Barker as he pulled a ‘steel balls’ move on Karol Jablonski to win the right-hand side of the box, which he subsequently used to effect a ‘push’ on the Spanish boat, upsetting and slowing his opponent’s final approach to the line.

It was job done for Barker at that point, as strategist Ray Davies explained: “The emphasis was on being first off the start line and we put a little pressure on Dean to pull one out of the bag, and he did for us today. Certainly that half a boatlength lead was where the race was controlled from. We were able to set up to the left of the Spanish and there was never any right-hand shift they could come back on.”

Dickson back from the Dead

A week ago Gavin Brady voiced the confidence that BMW Oracle Racing have in their boat USA 98. “I’ve personally never been on a boat where we feel we’re the only people that could screw it up for 98.”

The first two matches of the Semi Finals seem to bear that out, as Chris Dickson turned on the afterburners down the first run to reduce a whopping 58-second deficit at the windward mark to just 20 seconds by the leeward gate.

If the Americans ever manage to get comfortably in front, it’s hard to see Luna Rossa being able to match the awesome pace of USA 98.

But credit where credit is due, because both the Luna Rossa navigator Michele Ivaldi and his USA counterpart Peter Isler said it was also about picking good lanes downwind. And BMW Oracle found the better lanes of breeze today, as well as being faster.

“It is not all boat speed,” said Isler. “We are happy with USA 98 all around the course, the oscillations and puffs gave more opportunity for the trailing boat to look super fast than on a typical sea breeze day where it is more persistent. Gavin (Brady) and Eric (Doyle) did a great job calling the wind, it was good tactics on board and good sail trim. Boat speed is in play, but we have been playing the runs well.”

Overall, both afterguards sailed a tighter match today compared with yesterday’s freestyling all over the race course. However, the onshore conditions were much more predictable than yesterday so the passing lanes were fewer too. The first part of the final beat saw some close tacking until… both boats broke off from battle to go off chasing better breeze on their side of the course. Back to weather gambling again!

At one point the lateral separation across the course was more than 1.5km, with USA on the left, Italy on the right. What was amazing was that when they converged again at the top of the course, they were absolutely neck and neck, to the point where Dickson could initiate a luffing match.

James Spithill held his nerve to round the final mark 14 seconds ahead, but four or five seconds of that slender advantage were swallowed up by the difference in quality of spinnaker hoists. As usual it was the American boat that looked slicker.

Dickson was now able to put all sorts of pressure on the Italians, and when Grael opted to swap sides with USA 98 to claim the tactical power of the right, you got the sense that this was the Brazilian’s final weapon in his ever-depleting armoury.

Boat for boat, and manoeuvre for manoeuvre, the BMW Oracle team is just too strong for Luna Rossa – with the exception of the pre-start where first blood definitely went to Spithill. By far the stronger finishers, however, are the Americans, and they won by 13 seconds today.

Asked why BMW Oracle seem to make it so hard on themselves, why they’re always starting on the back foot, Isler laughed in reply: “It’s more fun and more spectacular! It is certainly harder on the heart, but with a great crew and boat, coming back is all part of the scene. Sometimes you are not going to come off the line first or get the first shifts so you have to have that ability if you want to win the Cup.”

It’s certainly highly entertaining stuff, and Dickson and Co warrant an Oscar nomination for the cliffhanger scripts they’ve been writing these past two days. Long may it continue. While the Americans are busy making Hollywood movies, the Kiwis are writing the text book on how to match race. And text books are very worthy but very boring, which is why I haven’t written about them today. I’m sure that will suit Dean Barker and his team just fine. They’d rather do boring than nailbiting any day.

Breakaway tactics see Luna Rossa topple BMW Oracle

Two more contrasting styles in match racing you could not have hoped to see today. With the wind blowing off the city for the opening matches of the Louis Vuitton Cup Semi Finals, the fluky, shifty conditions made it a tough call as to whether afterguards should be chasing the best breeze or defending position on the race course.

Luna Rossa and BMW Oracle Racing seemed to favour the former – chasing the breeze at the expense of tactical positioning – while Emirates Team New Zealand never allowed Desafio Espanol room to breathe. The Kiwis were all over the Spanish like a rash, and while it never meant Dean Barker could put any sort of comfortable distance between him and Karol Jablonski, at least it meant he won the race.

The Italians and Americans, on the other hand, were playing a much faster and looser game, rolling the dice for a six and hoping for the best. Luna Rossa tactician Torben Grael is notorious for going for the big gamble, and quite often makes it pay.

When you’re the perceived underdog, as Luna Rossa are considered to be, it makes even more sense to break away from your opponent. The more separation you can create from your superior rival, the less significant any differences between boatspeed and boathandling become.

Which begs the question why the BMW Oracle afterguard were playing the same game of rolling for a six. USA 98 is considered to be one of the fastest – if not the fastest – boat among the challengers, and no one can match the slick crew work of the BMW Oracle crew.

So, why didn’t they do as the Kiwis did, and keep it tight on their opposition? Peter Isler commented at the press conference after racing: “The one thing that was clear was it was a very shifty day, and you had to try to connect the dots with the puffs. It looked like a day where you had to throw away some of your classic match racing tactics and keep a more open mind.”

The American team put their faith in the right, and it didn’t pay off, as they trailed Italy by 52 seconds at the top mark, an immense delta at this level. However, when Torben Grael took Luna Rossa back to the centre of the track downwind, it opened the door for USA 98 to charge down the right in a big puff of breeze, and suddenly that 400 metre deficit was down to zero again.

We were back into a full-on match race as Dickson tried to bully James Spithill out of his approach to the left-hand gate, but the Italians showed some good high-pressure boathandling to hold their nerve and protect the left-hand exit while Dickson made a dive for the right. At this point tactician Gavin Brady could have taken the fight back to the Italians with an early tack, but instead the Americans plugged on right and the Italians went left again. Within a matter of minutes the Italians had extended the gain line to 400 metres, and this time they held the lead comfortably to the finish.

Isler said the crucial moment came at the leeward gate when the Italians successfully defended the favoured left-hand mark. “That engineered a split that you don’t want to happen on a day like today. Had we gone back over immediately we’d have been four boatlengths behind. How would it have played out then? A bit more of a dogfight maybe?” Yes, it probably would have been, and with the great benefit of hindsight, BMW Oracle would have stood a much better chance of beating Luna Rossa.

The pressure must be beginning to tell on the American camp. After all, this is not a one-off. BMW Oracle could have played a tighter match to the Kiwis last Wednesday in the final decisive match of the Round Robins. By opting for a big split they lost out to Emirates Team New Zealand then, and they have done it again today against Italy.

In shifty conditions it’s a tough call knowing how to juggle priorities between best breeze and best tactical position. However, for a team that's so well equipped for close quarters combat, it’s surprising to see BMW Oracle try to fight their battles with inaccurate long-range weapons rather than getting stuck in to some hand-to-hand fighting. It will be interesting to see if Dickson, Brady and Isler decide to fix bayonets next time.

The Italian Job

There were dramatic differences in the keel bulb shapes presented yesterday at Port America's Cup. The bigger, wealthier teams seemed to favour longer, torpedo-shaped bulbs while the poorer teams preferred shorter, stubbier keels. It's quite possible that the big teams are playing a game of smoke and mirrors, keeping their real intentions secret until later in the competition.

The expected light airs would suggest that a short stubby bulb is better for this stage of the regatta, as it has a lower-wetted surface area and is less 'sticky' in light airs. So maybe the big teams will change their bulbs at the last minute. The smaller teams do not have the time or money to play such games, and so their keels are likely to be a more 'honest' configuration for the weather conditions predicted for Louis Vuitton Act 13.

Although there were no massive shocks at the unveiling, one of the more surprising things was just how flat the Luna Rossa boats were underneath. So flat, in fact, they almost look square. So square, they could be Olympic Star boats. When five-time Olympic medallist Torben Grael, Luna Rossa’s tactician, was asked if the boats had been designed to make him feel more at home, he admitted the boats did indeed look a bit Star-like. “Except that they are flatter than a Star,” he added, laughing.

If there were few surprises in the boats, the skippers’ press conference this morning caused a bit of a stir when Kiwi skipper Dean Barker said he would be handing over the wheel to British understudy Ben Ainslie. Talk is that the three-time Olympic medallist has been giving Barker a good run for his money during in-house racing sessions, so maybe this is Barker’s way of saying ‘thank you’ to Ainslie for his role as B-boat driver. Or is it an indicator that Ainslie might also do some of the steering in the Louis Vuitton Cup?

Meanwhile, over the other side of Port America’s Cup at the +39 Challenge base, Iain Percy’s crew have been working late into the evening – and going for a test sail in the dark!!! – preparing their brand new, untested Version 5 mast for competition in Act 13. What a shame these guys haven’t had a clear run at the Cup without all the ‘will they, won’t they’ shenanigans caused by the ongoing financial problems in the team. This is a team competing not for the money, but for the love.