TNZ put rivals on notice
Team New Zealand helmsman Peter Burling felt his boat put on a speed exhibition as the Kiwis dominated the second day of the America’s Cup.
It wasn’t quite a statement performance this early in the regatta – there was a sloppy prestart penalty in their second race against Britain – but Team New Zealand have put their rivals on notice in terms of sheer pace and performance.
Team New Zealand came from behind to beat both Dean Barker’s Team Japan and Ben Ainslie’s British outfit to leap to second on the qualifying series leaderboard behind Oracle Team USA who lost one of their three races on a busy day in Bermuda yesterday.
Barker got an early leap on his old team but got mowed down by the Kiwis in a fifth leg tacking duel. The Kiwis completed a comfortable a 33s win.
Ainslie had the benefit of a twoboat start after Cup rookie Burling copped a penalty for entering the starting box early. But the Kiwi boat simply roared past the Brits on the second leg in embarrassing fashion and never looked back, cruising to a 1m 28s win.
‘‘I’m really happy with the boat speed that we showed and the way we bounced back,’’ Burling, 26, said.
He felt the penalty was a good lesson to learn at this stage of the campaign and was delighted with the way his team got out of jail with such ease.
‘‘We had a couple of tiny issues on board and the breeze was dropping quite quick, we just misjudged that entry by a few seconds. It’s something that happens in these boats,’’ Burling said of his mistake. ’’I think it was actually really good practice for us to have a penalty in that prestart and figure out the best way to scrape it off and start the chase.
‘‘It’s something that’s never ideal to start off with an entry penalty. But we were pretty happy
with how it shaped up.’’
On a day of upsets – Artemis Racing dropped their opening race to unfancied France by 3s but bounced back to trounce Oracle by 39s while Britain and Japan lost both their races – the Kiwis kept their cool and continued to impress with their fluid foiling, especially through the turns where
they wore down Barker’s crew.
‘‘The boys sailed pretty well today,’’ Burling said, emphasising there was plenty left to improve
‘‘We fell pretty similar to how we did yesterday. Obviously we were fortunate to get a couple of wins but we had a great race with Dean and also Ben
‘‘We still feel like we still made plenty of mistakes out there. But it was pretty nice to end up on the right side of it today rather than the wrong side like we did yesterday.’’
Burling felt the day’s results reflected the competitiveness of the six-boat fleet vying for sport’s oldest trophy.
He tipped his cap top Artemis for showing that defenders Oracle were far from invincible as they cheekily get the measure of their opponents by racing in the challengers series.
‘‘Seeing Artemis guys take down Oracle is pretty pleasing for the rest of us. It shows you how much of an even field it is. Everyone is going to have to put their best foot forward to win these things,’’ Burling said.
It was a tricky day on the course with wind shifts changing several races. Team New Zealand made the right calls to win their two races unlike their opening day blunder that cost them a win against Oracle.
‘‘We wanted to put in a strong performance today,’’ skipper Glenn Ashby said.
‘‘They were both key races so happy to take away two more points. But really we still feel we have plenty to improve on, and we are making the most of every minute of racing we can get at the moment because we haven’t had much of it. So we are looking forward to tomorrow.’’
Team New Zealand have just one race on Tuesday, lining out against Sweden, as the first phase of the round-robin racing is completed.