Team New Zealand pumped for final

Team New Zealand trimmer Blair Tuke says their battles against the British and Swedish challengers have left them in the best possible shape to take down Oracle.

While Oracle were last in action during the qualifying series two weeks ago, Team NZ have had 14 high-pressure races since then, first against Ben Ainslie Racing followed by Artemis in the challengers final, which the Kiwis won 5-2 to set up a rematch of the 2013 America’s Cup.

Oracle have been working with Dean Barker and his Team Japan since his outfit were knocked out of the semifinals. However, now the challenger has been found teams are no longer allowed to practise against each other. That is fine with Tuke, who says Team NZ have had all the training they need.

‘‘We’ve obviously had the races against BAR and Artemis which Oracle’s missed out on since the early round-robin and that’s been really valuable racing experience for us,’’ Tuke told Radio Sport.

‘‘The whole way through we’ve been making gains on the boat and getting the boat going faster and that will keep going ... learning where we can position the boat out on the course, what the tack loss is, what the gybe loss is and everything around the starting which we’re continuing to learn from.’’

The Kiwis lost both of their round-robin races against Oracle, by six seconds and 29 seconds respectively, but Tuke believes there is nothing between the teams. ’’They were really close and we probably handed them the wins from a couple of mistakes on our behalf,’’ he said.

‘‘Our boat speed was even or better than theirs, which was was nice. But they’re going to get faster and hopefully we’ve made from jumps forward so certainly the races are going to be really close and whoever sails better on the day will take those races.’’