British boat ‘the lamest of ducks’

Sir Ben Ainslie’s new America’s Cup boat has been labelled ‘‘the lamest of ducks’’ in a damning summation on the eve of proper racing.

British pundit Magnus Wheatley has delivered a brutal blog on Ainslie’s chances as the INEOS Team UK boat sits behind closed doors being desperately worked on after missing the first two days of official practices.

Wheatley likened it to the feeling of the midweek club racers who regularly experience ‘‘the utterly deflating feeling of hauling a boat that is at least two clicks slower around a racecourse’’. But he then got serious in an article making allegations of internal unrest in the struggling syndicate that is desperate to make up for a disappointing effort at Bermuda 2017.

‘‘Well, imagine how you’d feel if you’d just blown £120 million of someone else’s money and have an absolutely balls-out racing machine laden with some of the best sailors on the planet, a supercomputer or two to measure a billion points of data a day and you’re still way off the pace,’’ Wheatley wrote in his Rule69 blog headlined ‘‘Panic Stations’’.

‘‘The first time you take it to a racecourse, it breaks. You then scuttle back to base, close the doors and silently weep.

‘‘The management are all at each other’s throats and the billionaire owner is breathing, heavily, down your neck ... it’s depressing.

‘‘Well, that’s what’s happening in New Zealand right now with Ratty’s Rita [Ainslie’s boat] looking like the lamest of lame ducks and the rest of the fleet and commentators dumbfounded as to where it has all gone wrong.’’

Wheatley wrote he was hearing ‘‘the first rumblings of discord in the team with morale at rock bottom’’.

Ainslie’s first boat AC75 was seriously off the pace and the design team, headed by Kiwi Nick Holroyd, went ultra radical with their second boat to be raced in Auckland. It appears to have backfired.

Wheatley suggested the damaged mast from Tuesday’s warmup before the first official practice wasn’t the real problem.

‘‘It’s their on-the-water performances whilst tuning up that have set the alarm bells ringing. Team Ineos sail the boat differently to the others – and some would say they are stuck in a set of procedures that other teamsmoved on from some time ago.

‘‘And they are slow. Possibly not even at the pace of American Magic and a million miles from Team New Zealand and Prada.’’

Sponsors would be applying ‘‘unbearable pressure’’ and he forecasted worse to come when some real racing would be unavoidable in the form of next week’s world series and Christmas Cup regatta.

‘‘December 18 could be a horrible day for Team Ineos. Two races against Team New Zealand – the All Blacks of yachting – who will take no prisoners,’’ Wheatley wrote for Rule69. ‘‘They are a ruthless killing machine.’’