With some semblance of an early pecking order established during the opening races of the Louis Vuitton Cup Round Robins, the New York YC’s American Magic was sitting on the bubble going into Race Day 6 of the series and sitting alongside them on that bubble was INEOS Britannia. For these two challengers, the race to the top of the standings was well and full on.
In winds just strong enough to foil and just light enough to not, there was heightened pressure on both teams to maintain flight, even American Magic’s starboard helmsman Tom Slingsby was keyed into this in the pre-start when INEOS Britannia took early control of the dance. “We’ll take a penalty instead of falling off the foils,” Slingsby said to his teammates. A brief touch down for INEOS and a pre-start boundary penalty, however, gave the Americans enough breathing room to claim control at the start.
With the British splitting early, American Magic wasted little time in covering their rivals, and at the first intersection they shifted into a decisive defensive game of cover, pinning INEOS against the course’s right-hand boundary.
At the first gate there was only 20 seconds between them, but the Americans had an open course, linked the puffs as they wished and opened up a 350-meter lead with sharp boathandling. The British, however, chipped away at American Magic’s lead on the next upwind leg as both teams went boundary to boundary, INEOS reducing the delta to 16 seconds at the next gate.
Then it was down to 9 seconds at the bottom of the run, setting up what was arguably the closest race of the Louis Vuitton Cup thus far. Up Leg 5 they went, American Magic doing it all it could to cover and match the noteworthy tacking efficiency of INEOS. “Keep the pressure, concentrate on our tacks,” Slingsby calmly pressed his teammates.
Their lead had been decimated to only 16 meters by the time America’s Magic’s Patriot soared around the right-hand gate mark to bear away on the final leg. The boat got too high on foils, however, skied and skid into a speed-sapping touchdown. INEOS pounced and happily took the lead as the two split sides. American Magic nosed into more wind on the right side of the course nearly halfway down the run while the British found themselves in lull and slow through the final intersecting jibe. American Magic cruised past and grabbed the win by 13 seconds, bursting the British bubble.
It was, without a doubt, the most compelling race of the series, which continued to be played out in sub-10-knot conditions that produced lop-sided results for the remainder of the day’s races. In the next, Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli and Orient Express engaged with the French picking up a pre-start boundary penalty and fighting to get out of displacement mode to start. Orient Express could only chase the undeafeated Italians, and the final delta was just over a minute in 22 minutes of racing.
With INEOS Britannia already sitting on one loss for the day, they had Emirates Team New Zealand to contend with next, and while there were no series points on offer with this one, it would be there final chance to gauge themselves against the defender before the New Zealanders are excused from the remaining Louis Vuitton Cup race. INEOS Britannia stepped off with a clean start, but the New Zealanders had the Brits promptly pinned at the left boundary by maintaining the lethal high-mode that has been their weapon of no defense in the series.
Ainslie saw the writing on the wall before tacking off the boundary, mentioning there’d be trouble out of the tack, and trouble there was. The British boat flubbed the tack and had to dive to leeward of the Kiwis to rebuild speed. There was nothing they could do to get past the defenders and did themselves no favors by falling off the foils while turning through the fourth gate. That was the end of that race with a final delta being a whopping 3m:02s…almost a leg ahead.
Brimming with confidence, American Magic swapped out its cyclors and returned to the course for its next of the day, this one against Alinghi Red Bull Racing, the Swiss team with only one win in the series to this point. This was American Magic’s race to win in order to nudge itself closer to the Italians atop the standings, but an early-entry penalty would be the first of a cascading series of mistakes.
Crossing the starting line with 75 penalty meters to give to Alinghi Red Bull Racing, promptly split off the start and Alinghi transitioned straight into its defensive cover, executing clean maneuvers and giving no room for American Magic to gain any leverage or passing opportunities. There was 10 seconds between them at the top mark and, again, nowhere for the American’s to go to find any opportunity to fast. Charging down the run with a comfortable lead, the Swiss were sharp and giving nothing away.
Halfway down the run, American Magic was struggling with its maneuvers, hemorrhaging meters with every turn, to the point where Slingsby could be heard responding to a tactical prompt from his teammates with “It doesn’t matter…we’re so far behind…”
Ceding the cover game to the Swiss, the American’s simply went looking for wind and shifts on the final upwind leg, but that didn’t help much. There was no getting around Alinghi Red Bull Racing, which would pile on the hurt on the final downwind leg to finish a good 38 seconds ahead.
The final non-counting race of the day, with Emirates Team New Zealand and Orient Express all but assured the French team’s position at the bottom of the Challenger fleet. Struggling with maneuvers in the light and patchy conditions, they seemingly spent more time in the water than on the foils, and once the Emirates Team New Zealand got into its stride after one touchdown halfway up the first upwind leg, the race was all but done and dusted.
The win cemented the dominance of Emirates Team New Zealand over the challenger fleet, and the mid-fleet pecking order essentially remains unchanged. American Magic, INEOS Britannia and Alinghi Red Bull Racing have their work cut out to prevent themselves from falling off the bubble in the next round, and as it stands, Orient Express Racing Team is staring down the strong probability of being the Louis Vuitton Cup’s first casualty.
