Gladwell's Line- America's Cup World Series exposes Team NZ soft spot

by Richard Gladwell, Sail-World.com on 25 Nov 2016 The America's Cup World Series is thankfully over.

Emirates Team New Zealand was not able to pull back the points deficit in the final round in Fukuoka, Japan, and emerged without any Qualifier points from a largely pointless series.

For sure the exhibition racing pulled spectators at the venues. But as a TV event, it only served to burn off the sailing fans, and races taking 12-15 minutes are not an indicator of form for the upcoming America's Cup.

For TV and online fans, over a weekend, the sailing regatta lasted less than the length of a game of Rugby - and if you were unlucky, it lasted less than a half of the same ball game.

As a form guide, the America's Cup World Series was about as useful as putting Formula 1 drivers into Speedway cars and giving them a few races around Western Springs and then projecting that outcome as some harbinger of the next Formula One World Championship.

If the series was intended as a shore-based spectator event, it probably succeeded and probably better than the previous attempts in IACC monohulls - whether they were a team's own boats or a four boat fleet that had been equalised.

But that land based fan appeal came at the cost of racing close to the shore on affected and often near-windless courses. The New York series on the Hudson River would have been the worst - complete with having to tow an AC45 past the crowd on the first day to show what a foiling cat looked like.

International viewers have had to endure a variety of video delivery mechanisms depending on where they live. Be it trying to squint at the mobile phones, or some larger mobile device, or watching it on a subscription TV channel - to which they may or may not have a subscription. Gone is the universal free to air view of the previous Cup of YouTube - the same or similar maximum audience coverage model used by every other major sailing series. Again, the America's Cup stands in a lonely place in the Sailing-World.

For Kiwis, the signing of Sky TV is an unknown quantity. Fortunately, the channel has a near-monopoly on paid TV and also has a free to air channel - on which coverage may be run - live or delayed.

The question is whether Sky will put any other resources into the coverage - in the same way they do with Rugby?

Or will they just flick the switch from the Bermuda satellite at the appointed time and relay the feed to New Zealand?

TVNZ had put an enormous effort into coverage over the past 30 years, and had built the America's Cup into a substantial sporting property in New Zealand. It would be disappointing if this were not replicated in 2017.

Kiwis face an uphill task
Of more pressing concern is the New Zealand performance in the latter stages of the series.

The Kiwis only made it harder on themselves picking up numerous penalties, often through unforced errors such as sailing outside boundary lines, cutting it too fine in crossing situations and the like.

Starting errors are more excusable as the margins are literally split-second and holding back usually puts the boat at the back of the fleet. On the first day of racing, the boat that was first down the short reaching leg went on to win the race, and often the same for the second placed boat.

The penalties bought back memories of the 34th America's Cup and the latter half of the regatta where Dean Barker was caught out several times in the starting box by Oracle Team USA's Jimmy Spithill. In the material that has come out after that series, Oracle's coach Philippe Presti claimed to have worked out that the New Zealanders had a set pattern of responses in the starting box, and developed a set of moves designed to counter these.

Of course while there is the immediate consequence of a penalty and having to clear that, there is also crew rattling effect which can last for the rest of the race.

Much is made of the Olympic and other top level performance in the current New Zealand boat. But with the departure of Dean Barker there is a significant loss of match racing expertise in the back of the Kiwi AC50, and more importantly on the helm where an an intuitive response to a given match racing play is required.

Remember part of the original game plan for Emirates Team NZ was to run two AC45S boats. Two sailing teams with Barker against Burling to slug it out for the skipper's berth along with other key spots. That strategy was aimed at getting over the criticism that Team NZ was self-selected from some old-boys club and that competition for places was not encouraged.

Even if Barker was going to exit anyway, there is plenty of good match racing multihull talent available to Team NZ - like Phil Robertson, the winner of the last World Match Racing Championship sailed in M32 catamarans.

America's Cup Events Authority, the Defender's event organisation arm, wiped that ETNZ strategy out with a single blow, with the tacit agreement of the majority of the other Challengers, when they removed the Qualifier Series and a big chunk of NZ government sponsorship and early cash-flow in April 2015.

Had that stayed in place ETNZ would have been in the Hauraki Gulf now working up with two helmsmen and crews with quite different backgrounds to get the best possible crew, while the AC50 build was being completed for a New Year launch.

Instead the Defender has pulled together a new challenger team out of Japan, staffed it with more senior members from Team NZ and elsewhere, and are running it as their training partner in Bermuda.

To illustrate the inter-dependence between the two Challenger and Defender teams, a recent report from a UK reporter visiting Bermuda, says that Japan have just two designers and a total of five in their structural/design team. An independent team would have at least 30 in these roles.

Match racers to the fore
The helmsmen in the top two teams in the America's Cup World Series - Ben Ainslie and Jimmy Spithill are also the two most experienced match racers in the six-boat fleet.

Both sailed very aggressively, with Ainslie, in particular, making short-work of his victims when the opportunity rose, and when it suited the Brits' short and long term tactical plan.

His start in the opening race of the final day as a case in point, where four-time Olympic Gold Medalist traded off getting a penalty himself to be able to drive ETNZ and OTUSA above the startline, before diving down and starting. Even after Ainslie had cleared his penalty, he was still ahead of the deftly herded Kiwis and OTUSA. Plus he got the additional bonus of getting a penalty against New Zealand - and was probably trying for one against the USA, too.

Some song second verse at Mark 2 in the same race, where Ainslie first lined up the hapless French by gybing in front of them - and soon afterwards the French duly obliged by sailing up the Brits transom and copped a penalty for not keeping clear. With that one in the bag, Ainslie could see the Kiwis coming across to the leeward gate on port, lined them up and pounced with a port/starboard infringement - scoring two penalties in the one rounding.

Ainslie eventually won the series in Fukuoka by pulling another slick match racing move on Spithill on the final rounding mark of the final race. He threw a sudden luff, causing Spithill as the windward boat to respond, and lose momentum - while Ainslie put his bow down and scampered for the line, leaving Spithill to fume and boil-over in his wake.

The problem for three of the America's Cup teams (ETNZ, Artemis and Groupama) is that you can't pick up the required level of match racing experience in the six months that remain until the start of the 35th America's Cup. Ainslie, Spithill and Barker have paid their dues on the world match racing circuits and have the experience, backed up by some solid coaching and performance analysis in the previous Cup when Ainslie and Spithill were on the same boat.

Certainly, the next America's Cup is not going to be sailed in similar speed boats. The AC50's are expected to be at least double the speed. Someone will have a speed edge. They are going to be sailing on courses - hopefully, that allow for more than 12-15 minutes of racing. But it will be match racing, not fleet as we have seen in the nine event ACWS.

The point remains that no matter how fast the boats, the first minutes of the race are spent in the confines of the starting box, and intuitive match racing reactions are paramount. Wong-foot your opponent and the bonus is a penalty against the other boat. The secondary bonus is that having handed your rival an early lead on a plate, it is one thing to catch your competitor if indeed you have a faster boat, but it is another thing to pass. That again is where the match racing skills come into play -same as they did in Fukuoka last weekend.

There's not a lot of point on spending thousands of man-hours on the design computer if it is going to be given away through penalties and the like.

Maybe the learning of this vital lesson will prove to be even more important than the leg-up of one or two points in the Qualifier Series.