BT in second place after Day 1 - iShares Cup

by BT Media on 20 Sep 2008
After the first day of the final event in the iShares Cup Extreme 40 Sailing Series in Amsterdam, the BT Extreme 40 crew of Nick Moloney, Darren Bundock, Ed Barney and Stevie Mitchell scored a 6th, 1st, 3rd, 2nd, 3rd and 7th leaving them in second place, two points ahead of Oman Sail.

Racing 10 Extreme 40s on a tiny canal in the middle of Amsterdam was always going to be tricky and it took the teams some time to work out the wind shifts and make the right calls. Defending America’s Cup team Alinghi struggled in the first two races, then won the next four putting them at the top of the leaderboard 18 points ahead of TEAMORIGIN, their closest rival for the overall series, now in fourth place.

The forecast for tomorrow, the penultimate day of racing on the IJ-Haven waterway, is similar to today. Racing starts at 13h00 local time with another six races scheduled.

From Nick Moloney: 'It was a really good day out on the water, we had a strategy about how we wanted to sail the boat even before we came here and put that in place and we feel confident going into tomorrow.

It’s really hard to hold your nerve out there but we were cool and felt comfortable, we just sailed how we wanted and really enjoyed it. This is the event that decides the year and a lot of work has gone into it.

Its tricky sailing here but there are some trends that you pick up quickly – like you know the wind will go right, then left again towards the top, then left, left, left, then hard right! And that’s a geographical effect of the buildings around us and in this wind direction it seems the shifts are consistent. But the wind is also bouncing over the buildings and comes down onto the water vertically and sheering, so its hard to have a guy 10-feet away from you just get a little bit of wind and shoot past you!

Coming to events like these there’s always some luck involved but I always believe the best teams come out on top. We know both Oman and Holmatro are both really strong but we’re on par with them technically and ability wise, as well as boat speed - we’ve just got to be better that’s the bottom line!

Day 1, after 6 races:

1st Alinghi, 54 points
2nd BT, 44 points (6th / 1st / 3rd / 2nd / 3rd / 7th)
3rd Oman Sail, 42 points
4th TeamOrigin, 36 points
5th Holmatro, 33 points
6th JPMorgan Asset Management, 30 points
7th Tommy Hilfiger, 27 points
8th iShares, 22 points
9th Volvo Ocean Race, 22 points
10th Team Aqua, 20 points

For more information on the iShares Cup, go to http://www.iSharesCup.com