Burling is incredibly talented, says Coutts
Russell Coutts has described Peter Burling as ‘‘an incredible talent’’ and predicts a long America’s Cup future for Team New Zealand’s young star.
Kiwi Coutts is the most successful skipper in Cup history, helming wins with New Zealand and Switzerland and overseeing Oracle Team USA’S last two victories in a hands-on management role.
Coutts also controls the Cup’s governing body in Bermuda and has marvelled at the current challengers final that has seen Burling and Nathan Outteridge transfer their Olympics rivalry to professional yachting’s biggest stage.
Burling has guided Team New Zealand to a 4-2 lead over Sweden’s Artemis Racing with one more win needed to confirm a grudge rematch with Oracle.
Burling is aged 26 and Outteridge is 31. Both are fearless and Coutts sees them very much as the fresh faces of a high-paced format he has engineered by introducing foiling catamarans to replace the laborious monohulls of times gone by.
‘‘I think Nathan Outteridge and Pete Burling are two really exciting prospects and already incredible talents and that talent is showing through,’’ Coutts, who has the perfect 15-0 in Cup finals racing, told Americascup.com.
‘‘Clearly they are good at high performance boats, but I think they could jump in any sort of boat and do well with it.
‘‘I don’t think it’s just limited to force in this format,’’ Coutts said.
Dean Barker was on the wheel of the Team Japan boat at the age of 44, the same age as Team France skipper Franck Cammas.
Oracle skipper Jimmy Spithill is a super fit 37-year-old looking for a hat-trick of Cup wins.
Outteridge beat Barker in the challenger semifinals and Burling saw off Ainslie.
Team New Zealand have moved in a new direction with their sailing crew. After their San Francisco meltdown four years ago, the team did a big clean out, realising most of their heavyweights, including Barker, were getting long in the tooth for the new class of boats which are incredibly demanding physically.
Skipper Glenn Ashby, 39, is the only survivor in the sailing squad that operates the six-man boat.
Team New Zealand signed Burling’s Olympic sailing partner Blair Tuke alongside him early in this cycle. They also made the late move to bring on board Laser star Andy Maloney and Olympics Finn class sailor Josh Junior.
Burling is making rapid gains in his new environment. He’s not immune to mistakes and he readily admits his errors. He has a strong will to learn form his mistakes.
Like Coutts, he has a massive interest in engineering, which helps transfer his feel for the boat through to the team’s designers, making a much smoother process for development tweaks.
On the wheel, Burling has an aggressive approach and a winning mentality, highlighted by his two Olympic medals and seven world titles across three classes.