INEOS Britannia being craned in for America's Cup racing

Racing is due to resume today and continue through the weekend, all being well for INEOS Britannia as it continues its challenge to Emirates Team New Zealand for the Louis Vuitton America’s Cup. Today is, quite simply, massive for the overall outcome. Whatever the score after two races, a direction of travel could well be established.

Ben Ainslie, INEOS helm, is feeling confident. After two wins he spoke of the solid effort from the team, but admitted: “[There’s] still a long way to go.

“But the comeback is on. Every day we’re getting better at driving this boat.”

With the score now at 4-2, the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup Match has become more closely contested. Ineos Britannia’s victories have slowed Emirates Team New Zealand’s earlier momentum.

In scoring two wins on Wednesday, INEOS signalled its intent. One relatively easy win after Emirates Team New Zealand fell off the foils in the pre-start was followed up by a seven second, narrow victory where the team defended for all its worth.

Ainslie’s previously spoken of the biggest gains the team’s made in its straight-line performance and manoeuvring. “Manoeuvring is really critical, be that tacking, gybing or mark rounding and every time you spend you spend re-acclerating, trying to get back up to top speed, is obviously lost performance. So those were the big areas we’ve been working on,” he said although neither INEOS or ETNZ were on the water yesterday.

For Emirates Team New Zealand, the sailors came ashore on Wednesday ruing small errors and not capitalising on positional advantage – particularly in the pre-start. After a thorough de-brief, the expectation is that the Kiwis will come out swinging today.

Peter Burling, skipper for ETNZ, says the INEOS wins earlier this week were down to ETNZ mistakes. “It was a little bit frustrating in that first race obviously to make the small error and have a bit of wind go against us and end up off the foils,” he says. “The second race really felt that we had them on the ropes and then just made one tiny mistake, letting them get back over us on the way back to the line and then we were on the back foot the whole way from there.

“We dug deep, kept chipping away, and came right back into them. In the end, we lost by a few seconds, but it was one shift, one boat length, and it would have been ours.”

All eyes are on the weather this morning and in Barcelona it was a chilly start while off the coast, a band of clouds sat on the near horizon. The wind is in the west and it all depends on whether the sun and thermals keep the clouds away. If so, there maybe a switch to the south-west and the promise of breeze in the 10-13 knots region.

If, however, the clouds come in and the wind stays in the west, the likelihood is for a shifty day as the airflow comes across the city and Montjuïc comes into play. Current models suggest 7-11 knots from the west but there is hope amongst the professional meteorologists of an improving picture, at least for the first race before the wind may drop off a notch.

Fans from both Britain and New Zealand have thronged into the city and it’s a mass of colour, fun and the unique excitement of one of the world’s greatest sporting spectacles. The Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup is very much alive and kicking, and it’s game on for the duel in the sun to go all the way.

ETNZ sailors greet a gleeful crowd of supporters

Image courtesy of Emirates Team New Zealand via Facebook

British flag waving crowd celebrating Ben Ainslie and his team in America's Cup contestImage courtesy of America’s Cup media

Meanwhile, Eliud Kipchoge – the two times Olympic Champion – told Performance People podcast that he believes INEOS has what it takes. “They have done enough, they have planned well. They have prepared well. They should treat themselves as the best ones in this competition. They have what it takes to win the America’s Cup.”

Continue reading the latest news stories about the America’s Cup.

Understanding tactics of racing

View the race day briefing at the end of this article.

Processes and paperwork after winning America’s Cup

Come what may over the next couple of days, when it’s all over, the paperwork and process becomes crucially important.

Matt Sheahan, Planet Sail, says there’s one key difference between the America’s Cup and other major sporting events. “If you win the cup, you make the rules. It’s one of the reasons that it’s so hard to win.”

In the footage below he and Royal Yacht Squadron chairman Bertie Bickett discuss the three key documents within any America’s Cup cycle that drive the event.

Explaining deed of gift, letter of challenge and class rules

The deed of gift is a notice of race that sets some parameters for how the cup should be sailed including races (windward-leeward race, coastal race – like a short inshore-offshore race that has to go around the headland – and a third, if required, a triangular course). There are also other parameters about the length of the boat and the draft of the boat.

The document basically says, however, if the challenger and the defender choose to do something different, they’re perfectly entitled to do that, provided they both agree. If they don’t, you get what is termed a ‘dog match’ where the challenger and defender haven’t collaborated on the rules and they’ve reverted back to that original template for how the cup should be run.

The second document is a letter of challenge (this came from INEOS as soon at ETNZ won in Auckland). Once accepted, the defender really has to accept the challenge as it’s given to them – unless they can rule it out on a technicality. That then sets in motion a conversation about how you’re going to agree to the protocol for the next America’s Cup. That protocol is incredibly detailed document. In the case of this current cup, it took about six or eight months to write and publish, and it’s quite a big document.
That is basically your notice of race.

Finally comes the class rules, a sophisticated, detailed document, which also needs to be written.

“There are those that feel that the America’s Cup has become unrelatable to mainstream sailing, that it does nothing to enhance the sport at the grassroots level, and that it needs a reset back to something more aligned with the sailing that you and I perhaps do,” says Bickett. “There is another school of thought that says the America’s Cup is the absolute pinnacle of our sport and, as such, needs to be a beacon for technology, professionalism, and cutting-edge design, and should represent the global, international premier event that it is.”

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