Black Caps likely to meet more resistance from improving Irish
Team NZ fears temperamental catamarans could turn America’s Cup into maritime demolition derby Different tack for cup copycat
Team New Zealand sailing coach Ray Davies believes there's a “high chance” there will be capsizes during racing in this year's America's Cup.
The lead- up to the regatta, which gets underway in Bermuda later this month, has seen a flurry of mishaps on the Great Sound as the teams push their boats to their limits in pursuit of performance gains.
Cup defenders, Oracle Team USA, have been in the thick of a lot of the thrills and spills, suffering three major scares over the past few weeks. The most recent was a capsize in training on Wednesday, when a high- speed foiling gybe went wrong.
It was Oracle's second capsize in the space of a month.
Davies doesn't think these mishaps will be confined to just training runs. He said given the skittish nature of the highpowered wing- sail catamarans, it is likely we will see boats capsize during racing.
“There's a high chance that we could [ see a capsize during racing]. Those conditions when [ Oracle] capsized were only about 18 knots, so put another 5 knots on top of that and another boat in the vicinity and there's some luffing going on and some close- quarter action, and the boats can capsize very easily,” he said.
“The key when the breeze is up over 20 knots is just to make less mistakes than the opposition. People will make mistakes on those windy days and that's what will win and lose races. If there's a lot of breeze I'm not sure the performance difference between the t wo boats will be key, it'll actually be who can get around the race track in one piece.”
At this stage Oracle are the only team to have flipped their race boat. The fact they have now done so twice has led some to conclude there are problems with the stability of their boat — christened USA- 17 — or the crew's technique during manoeuvres.
Davies said from his position on the Emirates Team New Zealand chase boat, Oracle appeared to have been experiencing problems with their rudders in their training session.
“There seemed to be a few i ssues with their rudders yesterday [ Wednesday]. I'm sure they've learned a lot from it, but it looked like they had a few control issues, which is why they capsized — they turned a bit too far in the gybe,” said Davies.
“It's a fine line — these boats get pretty unwieldy quite quickly. You have the boat set- up for certain conditions and, that particular day, the wind increased very quickly and maybe they were not quite on the right setting and a wee crew handling error and over she goes.”
If practice racing is anything to go by, Davies said we will see yachts sparring in much closer quarters in this America's Cup, compared with the drag races that developed in San Francisco.
He suggested the pressure of having another yacht bearing down on a team at speeds of up to 50 knots can lead to costly mistakes.
“We are definitely seeing boats engage with one another quite a lot [ in the practice racing]. There were a lot more tacks than you'd see when the boats have a bit more separation between them. There was some match racing going on, keeping a close cover on the boat behind — that was pretty interesting to see,” he said.
“That just doubles the workload all of a sudden for the crew to throw more manoeuvres at them, there's a lot more resource needed to handle that. It's interesting to see the teams are turning it into a match race rather than just tearing off from one side of the course to the other going for speed.”
Team NZ will get another opportunity to test themselves under race- like conditions in next week's official practice window. Given the Kiwi syndicate missed all but one day of the four previous practice racing rounds, the team is looking to take full part in next week's racing.
“We'll definitely try do as much racing as we can, we haven't done much against another yacht. We do a lot against the chase boat, but that's not the same thing — it's a bit like dancing with your sister really,” he joked. The last time New Zealand met Ireland in an ODI, they rattled up their highest ODI total, produced what is still the fourth highest opening stand and won by a mile.
But that was nine years ago and Ireland, circa 2017, are a far more competitive beast than on that occasion.
They have full international recognition in sight and it’s no exaggeration to say they have a point to make in their tri- series, which also involves Bangladesh, the nation they kicked it off against early yesterday.
New Zealand have played the Irish just twice — a 129- run win in Guyana at the 2007 World Cup, when names like James Franklin, Jacob Oram, Scott Styris and Shane Bond were scattered through the lineup, and a year later in an associates’ tournament in Aberdeen.
New Zealand’s 402 for two rather ruined the match as a contest.
James Marshall ( 161 off 141 balls) and Brendon McCullum ( 161 off 135 balls, 10 of which cleared the fence) put on 274 to lay the foundation for a 290- run flogging.
The third clash at Malahide, just outside Dublin, late tomorrow night comes as Ireland are awaiting the International Cricket Council’s signature at next month’s annual meeting to become a fully- fledged test- playing nation.
They’ve just played t wo ODIs against England, losing both, but there are encouraging signs.
Names like William Porterfield, Paul Stirling and veteran Ed Joyce lead the batting; the O’Brien brothers remain while tidy left arm spinner George Dockrell is still only 24, but has seemingly been around for an age.
New Zealand warmed up with an easy 85- run win over the Irish Wolves in a 25- over knockabout in Dublin.
The success story for New Zealand was seamer Seth Rance, in his first New Zealand tour, who took four for 13 off four overs. He’s clearly chuffed to be there. “It’s not a bad way to start the tour,” Rance said. “It was a pretty Team New Zealand appear unfazed by Oracle Team USA’s move to mimic the Kiwi team’s radical cycle grinding set- up.
Reports surfaced this week that the two- time America’s Cup winners were trialling a pedalpowered pump on their boat — no doubt inspired by Emirates Team New Zealand’s decision to plump for leg power over the traditional grinding pedestals.
At this stage Oracle have installed just one cycle grinding station, which is located in the same cockpit as helmsman Jimmy Spithill, directly behind the twotime America’s Cup winning skipper.
Tactician Tom Slingsby is expected to provide the pedal power, with the two handlegrinding pedestals remaining in place. Team NZ trimmer Blair Tuke, who forms part of the Kiwi peloton on the water, said from what he had seen of Oracle’s set- up he expected the pedalgrinding platform would only be used in certain manoeuvres or situations around the race track.
“They have one of the guys stationed at the back there to input power when they need it,” said Tuke.
“It’s certainly not to the extent we’re doing, but they’ve obviously seen some benefits of what we’re doing and tried to copy a little bit.”
With just two weeks to go before the opening round of racing starts in Bermuda, Team NZ sailing coach Ray Davies said Oracle did not have a lot of time to develop the new system for the initial phase of racing, but they may be able to get it up and running before the America’s Cup match proper.
However, Davies said it would be a big gamble on the defender’s part to go down that path. .
“They’ve got the means to completely redesign their boat if they wanted to, and they have a little bit more time than the other competitors, so who knows where they’ll end up. It’s certainly quite late in the piece to be [ making major changes] and it’s not just how you power the boat, it’s what you do with those crew that is the key to the cycling side of things.” proud moment, cool to pull on the black gear, bowl some overs and have a nice win.
“I’m pretty pleased with how it came out and hope to build on that in the next few days.”
Rance warmed up for his first New Zealand trip with some time in the north Lancashire League.
“I came over about two weeks ago and had three games in similar conditions to what we have here,” he said.
Bangladesh are seventh on the ODI rankings and, if they beat Ireland twice and New Zealand at least once in this series, will go into the Champions Trophy at No 6. Different teams have different levels of expectations. That would have Bangladesh doing cartwheels.
They also play New Zealand during the Champions Trophy, at Cardiff on July 9. Even though they were soundly beaten, repeatedly, during their tour of New Zealand last summer, they are undoubtedly a competent limited- overs team.
The three countries will play each other twice before they set their sights on the trophy.
Don’t be surprised if there’s at least one surprise result during the course of the next week in the Emerald Isle.