Sailgp team squanders golden chance to sail for top finish

It’s just gutting to let our first podium race slip through our fingers like that.

New Zealand’s wait for an appearance in a Sailgp podium race goes on.

It all started so well for Peter Burling’s crew in Chicago for the second event of the new season, with a race win following by fifth and fourth-placed finishes on Sunday (NZT) seeing the side sit third with two races to go.

With lighter winds to contend with yesterday, they were able to hold their position with a fifth-placed finish in the penultimate fleet race — before all their good work earlier in the event was thrown away.

Only needing to finish sixth in the nine-strong fleet in the final race to confirm their participation in the podium race, the Kiwis got their start wrong and could not recover — finishing in eighth. Australia, the two-time defending champions, won the last race and took the Kiwis’ spot in the medal race by one point.

“It’s a pretty low mood within the camp at the moment,” wing trimmer Blair Tuke said after yesterday’s racing.

“It’s just gutting to let our first podium race slip through our fingers like that. We sailed well all weekend, making some good gains and gave ourselves a real shot there, but letting the Aussies sneak into the final race was all our doing, really.

“We just didn’t execute that last start and that was about all she wrote in that last race — tough to come back from there.”

Joining the league at the beginning of last season, that makes it 10 events in which the New Zealanders have failed to make it into the medal race. Instead, it was the three teams who contested the final in Bermuda who were again the last three on the water in Chicago — with Australia beating Canada and Great Britain in the final.

The result sees the Australian crew sit unbeaten at the top of the standings with two race wins in as many events. The Kiwis are fourth on the ladder.

It got off to a decent start for the Kiwis yesterday, who risked a wide start in the day’s opener but had some success with their position in the fleet as a result.

They were stuck in a duel for sixth and seventh against the Australians for most of the race, however Australia fell right back to the back of the fleet in the final legs and, while not an ideal result, they had positioned themselves well to break their finals drought.

They tried the same tactic in the starting gate for the final race and looked to have good speed coming to the line. However, a mistake saw them lose that momentum and get stuck on the outside of the rest of the fleet and unable to make a manoeuvre in the opening leg.

That put them on the back foot immediately and, while some teams had been able to make up ground through the fleet in the light winds earlier, the Kiwis had no such success. It became a matter of watching where Australia and Denmark were in the pack — given both teams could overtake the Kiwis.

“There is no magic bullet. You’ve got to be good across all areas and we’re not — and we’re not doing it for five races,” Tuke said.

“You’ve got to be consistent across five races if you want to make the final — even going into the last race we had let points slip.

“We should have pretty much had ourselves at a point of not being able to get touched going into that last race, but there were other things from the weekend too.

“We just have to keep looking ahead.”