Team New Zealand helmsman Peter Burling in Barcelona. Video / Michael Burgess
As the six America’s Cup teams prepare for the beginning of the Louis Vuitton Cup challenger series, one isn’t under quite the same sort of pressure.
While the five challengers tonight begin their fight for survival through the double round-robin, Team New Zealand join the fleet for, effectively, an additional10 practice races in which they won’t be earning points.
It’s a change from how the event proceeded in Auckland in 2021, when the defender competed in the preliminary regatta but was not seen again until the Cup match. This time, they will drop out when the challenger series reaches the semifinals, then meet the winner of the series in the Cup match.
It’s a change that Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli helmsman Jimmy Spithill said came with clear pros and cons for the challenging teams, who may need to show a lot more of their team’s abilities to safely make their way into the next stage of the competition.
“There’s definitely risk for all the challengers up here. We’re racing for survival and Team New Zealand isn’t,” Spithill said.
“They get quite a massive advantage, actually, by doing this, so there’s a lot of risk for the challengers.
“At the same time, you get to race the benchmark team in the America’s Cup, so it does go both ways, but for all the challengers there is some risk there.”
With Team New Zealand helmsman Peter Burling saying this group of challengers is the best the America’s Cup has seen for some time, those extra races could prove critical for their campaign.
The defenders go into this week’s races after winning last week’s preliminary regatta in Barcelona; dropping one of their six races in the first time the teams had properly raced their AC75s this campaign, though two of their six races were won due to technical issues with other teams.
Team New Zealand beat Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli in the final of the preliminary regatta in Barcelona. Photo / Ricardo Pinto, America's Cup
The team noted that the final day of the preliminary regatta – which saw a change in breeze and a bumpier sea state – wasn’t their best showing despite winning the event, with Burling saying they were still trying to get a handle on the location and picking wind shifts let them down that day.
The coming week will reveal how much teams were either holding back or have improved, but Team New Zealand remain in the position of not having to show their full hand for some time yet.
American Magic helmsman Tom Slingsby, who handed the Kiwis their loss in the preliminary regatta, said while they had been able to get a look at the other teams in racing it was still hard to read too much into anything.
“We still haven’t seen anyone in all different conditions. We felt pretty fast in those wavier conditions which was a good thing,” Slingsby said.
“For us, we thought Team New Zealand were really fast in the flat water but maybe didn’t have the same edge they had in the waves. For us, it feels like there might be a chink in the armour there, and we don’t know what we’re going to get here in the future so it’s interesting for us to see and we’re going to learn a lot more in the next two weeks.”
Louis Vuitton Cup format
Double round-robin; every team have two races against each other team.
At the end of the round-robins, the bottom-placed team and Team New Zealand will drop out of the competition.
For the semifinals, the team ranked at the top of the leaderboard will get their choice of opponent from their other three remaining challengers to square off against in a best-of-nine match.
The two winners will then meet in a best-of-13 final; the winner earning the right to challenge Team New Zealand in the best-of-13 Cup match.
