You can buy a lot of things with £100m, but it turns out that a good start to the America’s Cup isn’t one of them. After 10 years of work, Ineos Britannia had the worst possible opening to their challenge against Emirates New Zealand, and went two-nil down in the best-of-13 series after the first day of racing.
Their skipper, Ben Ainslie, and his team need to find a way to catch up – and fast – before the series runs away from them. “It’s not the start we were looking for,” Ainslie admitted, in a rueful expression of the glaringly obvious. “We just couldn’t quite match them around the track.”
If one thing was clear after the opening day, it was that they will gain nothing by waiting for New Zealand to gift it to them through making any mistakes of their own. Their performance, led by the skipper, Peter Burling, was almost faultless. Burling and his co-helm, Nathan Outteridge, controlled both races and outmanoeuvred Ainslie and his own co-helm, Dylan Fletcher, in both the pre-starts. The British boat spent most of the day chopping along in their wash.
It did not help that Ineos Britannia were thrown off by a last-minute problem with a battery before the opening race, which meant they were late into the start box. That error allowed Burling to seize control of the race before it had even begun, and his boat led through all six legs to win by a comfortable margin of 54 seconds. In the moments after the finish, Ainslie, who knows better than most, reminded everyone that there is “a long way to go yet, so don’t worry, we’ll keep pushing”.
He was as good as his word with the second of the day’s two races being a lot closer. The two boats were neck and neck through the first two legs, when the lead swapped back and forth five times. But New Zealand did a better job of using the favourable conditions on one side of the course, and pulled away to win by 27 seconds.
“I’ve always said it would be tough,” Ainslie said. “But that’s the game we’re in, and we’re going to keep plugging away.”
He admitted that his boat “didn’t have the perfect entry” in the first race, but said his crew “didn’t do a whole lot wrong” from that point on. “The Kiwis just had a slightly better race.”
Italy’s Luna Rossa made history in Barcelona, when they won the inaugural Women’s America’s Cup by beating Great Britain’s Athena Pathway in a one-off match race final by eight seconds.
For Italy’s skipper, Giulia Conti, it was the greatest moment of her career. 'I’m speechless,' she said. 'It’s a moment of immense joy.'
While Conti and her crew were beginning their celebrations, Athena Pathway’s skipper, the two-time Olympic champion Hannah Mills, was holding back her tears. 'Massive well done to Giulia and the Italian sailors, that was an amazing race,' Mills said, 'I’m so proud of all the competitors in this women’s race, and the way they’ve handled themselves on the world stage.'
The Women’s America’s Cup project is an overdue move to increase female representation in elite sailing. Athena Pathway have had the support of Ineos Britannia, whose Ben Ainslie co-founded the team along with Mills. 'We’ve got a fantastic opportunity coming up with the Athena Pathway programme,' he said, 'and I think this is just the start for the team.' Andy Bull
Ainslie said he felt that the New Zealand boat, named Taihoro, had taken a “jump forward” in the weeks since it was last on the water. It hadn’t been seen in racing trim since early September. The New Zealanders have been able to spend that time tinkering with her configuration, while Ineos Britannia, and the four other challengers, were competing against each other for the right to race in the final. That also meant New Zealand had every opportunity to study Ainslie’s racing strategy, and the strengths and weaknesses of the boat.
Ainslie’s team, on the other hand, were working off their best guesses about what shape the defender were in. Burling mischievously decided to make sure Ineos Britannia’s crew and coaches got the good look they had been longing for by buzzing their chase boats while he was circling the course before the start. It became clear enough that his team had made a couple of changes that turned out to be especially telling in the light wind. In the second race they were using a smaller jib and a skinnier rudder, which gave them a definite advantage when they were sailing upwind.
Great Britain’s hopes now rest on their team of analysts, based 1,000 miles away in the Mercedes F1 factory in Brackley, working out how they can improve the boat’s performance overnight.
Ainslie will also be hoping that the weather turns so they can see how the boats fare in heavy conditions but the forecast is for another day of light wind. There was so little of it around on the opening day that everyone had to endure a painful half-hour delay waiting for it to pick up to the six-and-a-half knot minimum limit so racing could get under way.
Even that couldn’t dampen the buzz of excitement around the port. Saturday was a national holiday in Spain and the water was lined with thousands of spectators, jockeying with each other for a glimpse through the thickets of masts at the great racing boats beyond. There were a lot of British fans among them. They have been waiting a long time for this chance: the last time the British were in contention to win the America’s Cup was way back in 1964, but unless Ainslie and his team can find the edge they need, they are all going to be waiting a while longer to actually see them win it.
