Yachting: Team NZ win Louis Vuitton Trophy

Team NZ celebrate winning the Louis Vuitton Trophy final against Mascalzone Latino in Auckland today. Photo / NZPA

Team New Zealand completed a 2-0 victory over Italians Mascalzone Latino in a shortened final to win the Louis Vuitton Trophy yachting regatta off Auckland today.

The final was to be a best-of-five race series but was trimmed to a maximum three races when light winds delayed the start of racing today.

Team New Zealand led 1-0 after winning the first race of the finals series by 12 seconds on Saturday and clinched victory in its home series with a convincing win in the second race.

Teams match-raced in identical 75-foot America's Cup Class yachts belonging to Team New Zealand and built for the 2007 America's Cup off Valencia.

Australian Adam Beashel, who was up the mast on the Team New Zealand yacht, called for the boat to take the right-hand side of the course on the first upwind leg and it managed to squeeze around the first mark with an eight-second lead.

Team New Zealand gybed in a wind shift at the start of the first downwind leg and gradually stretched away from Mascalzone Latino, leading by 21 seconds at the second mark and 38 seconds at the third.

Faultless crew work on the last downwind leg saw the New Zealand team stretch its lead further by the finish.

"It was a bloody hard race," New Zealand skipper Dean Barker said. "We had a very strong call from Adam up the mast who wanted to start to the right.

"Halfway up the first beat we thought the right wasn't going to come in but it did. The guys did an amazing job and the first downwind leg was the key for us."

Team New Zealand lost only two of 13 races at the regatta, to Aleph of France in the first round robin and to Azzurra of Italy in its best-of-three race semifinal.

The New Zealanders won the second race of the semifinal by one second to avoid elimination from the regatta and went on to dominate its final series with Mascalzone, skippered by Kiwi Gavin Brady.

Mascalzone took second place, Azzurra was third and Artemis of Sweden, skippered by American Paul Cayard was fourth. The French-German team All4One took fifth, TeamOrigin of Britain was sixth, Aleph seventh and Synergy of Russia eighth.

The Louis Vuitton regatta provides racing for America's Cup teams locked out of the latest Cup regatta between the American syndicate Oracle and Switzerland's Alinghi. Oracle beat Alinghi 2-0 in a best of three race series off Valencia, Spain in February and will defend the America's Cup, probably off San Francisco, in 2013.

The next Louis Vuitton Trophy regatta will be sailed off La Maddalena, Sardinia from May 22 to June 6.

- AP