1st choice crew set ahead of opening race
Team New Zealand’s first choice crew appears firmly set in stone ahead of tomorrow’s opening races in the America’s Cup.
Heading into the event in Bermuda there were only two contestable positions in the six- strong crew aboard Emirates Team New Zealand with skipper and wing trimmer Glenn Ashby, helmsman Peter Burling and flight controller/ cyclor Blair Tuke filling the core roles.
Andy Maloney, who narrowly missed out on the Laser spot at last year’s Olympics, is also a stalwart on board. Maloney’s chief duty is providing pedal power to maintain the hydraulic pressure which fuels the control systems to the high- tech foiling catamarans, but he also assists Tuke in trimming the foils.
Maloney, who stacked on 18kg for his role as one of the power men on board, controls the flight of the boat during the tacks while Tuke i s transitioning between hulls.
The remaining t wo spots at the front of the boat are shared among the team’s rotating cast of “cyclors”. Their sole job is to pedal as hard as they can, for as long as they can.
During Team NZ’s challenger finals match- ups against Ben Ainslie Racing and Artemis, Josh Junior and former sprint cyclist Simon van Velthooven spent the most time in the saddle, indicating they are the first choice line- up.
With the crews racing up to three times a day during the chal- lenger finals, Junior, who represented New Zealand in the Finn class at the Rio Olympics last year, was swapped out for Carlo Huisman during certain races. Van Velthooven, meanwhile, was used interchangeably with Olympic rowing champion Joe Sullivan. Team NZ has two further back- up cyclors in Guy Endean and Sam Bell. Swapping out crew can be a fine balancing act, as the team also needs to meet the weight rules on board. The rules for the 35th America’s Cup dictate that the maximum combined weight limit for the sixperson crew is 525kg, but there i s no minimum weight.