America's Cup: Artemis braced for another comeback to deny Team NZ

Artemis Racing address a breakdown on board during the America's Cup challenge final. Photo/Ricardo Pinto

They've already done it once at this regatta and Artemis Racing need to mount another big comeback tomorrow to keep their America's Cup challenge hopes alive.

Facing match-point at 4-2 after today's racing off Bermuda, the Swedish syndicate must now sweep all three of tomorrow's races to overhaul Emirates Team NZ for the Louis Vuitton Trophy and the right to face Oracle Team USA next week.

It's familiar territory for Artemis skipper Nathan Outteridge, who guided his ACC boat back from 3-1 down against Dean Barker and Team Japan in last week's semifinals, taking the final four races of that match.

"We saw in the semifinals that anything is possible and we'll keep just chipping away," said Outteridge, after today's racing.

"We wouldn't tackle the way we're tackling any of the starts or the first-mark approach. We've won six from six now and that's been [serving] us really well.

"It's more about what we do in the upwinds to try and keep them behind us, so to speak. Today we managed it really nicely in race one, but in the second two races, we weren't quite able to do it.

"I think it shows how incredibly close the racing is out there and how you really need to be perfect in your decision-making, if you want to win races.

"We'll obviously review the footage from today and probably review yesterday's again, and come out fighting tomorrow with a new and improved game plan."

Outteridge admitted there wasn't much his team could do to improve their ACC boat or crew at this stage of the event.

"It's pretty difficult to make radical changes overnight," he said. "Probably the biggest thing that will change for tomorrow is wind strength - it looks like it will be pretty light.

"The main thing we can do is address the mistakes we've made in our racing. The boat's going just fine, as long as we are in the right wind range for our configuration and we've proved we can win races, even when we're not in the correct wind range.

"I think if we just keep attacking the races as we have been and trying to control Team NZ as much as we can, then that's the most important thing for us to focus on now.

Team Sweden may also need to overcome their tendency to shoot themselves in the foot. In their qualifying match-ups with the Kiwis, Artemis incurred three penalties across two races, although umpires later conceded one of those was an error.

In two losses yesterday, they incurred a costly boundary penalty and then lost Outteridge overboard when the pressure went on. Today, they were forced to withdraw from the second race to address a malfunction in their control system.

Outteridge admitted the system fault was a hangover from the opening race, where his boat nose-dived and then veered sharply towards Team NZ, drawing a protest from his rivals.

:As you can appreciate, these boats are pretty complicated, with lots of buttons and bits and pieces," he explained. "Probably with a bit of that rain that we had earlier today, one of the buttons started misfiring and latching on, so we were struggling with the control system.

"That's what happened in that tack where we went flying sideways at them, but unfortunately we weren't able to fault-find that before the second race began and it presented itself to us again.

"During that second race, we had a better understanding of where it was coming from and instead of pushing all the way to the finish-line, we decided to stop and fix that problem, so we were good to go for the third race."

Today's results
05:12 Race 4: Sweden beat New Zealand by 15 secs (2-2)
05:51 Race 5: New Zealand beat Sweden withdrew (NZ 3-2)
06:30 Race 6: New Zealand beat Sweden by 1 sec (NZ 4-2)