America's Cup: Coaching Corner - the Italian's coaching trio

Luna Rossa - July 2024 © Luca Butto'

Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli’s approach to the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup has seen no stone left unturned in their historic quest to bring the trophy back to Italy for the very first time.

Right from the very start of training from their stunning base in Cagliari, Sardinia, the Italians have successfully trod the line between design and appendage development and technique training through a very structured process.

Central to the Luna Rossa programme has been the quiet influence of a trio of coaches – Philippe Presti, Hamish Wilcox and Jacopo Plazzi – who all have brought immense experience to extract the very best from their athletes. Philippe, a living legend of the sport of sailing after winning two Finn Class Gold Cups, is now into his seventh America’s Cup campaign having won twice with Oracle Team USA in 2010 and 2013. Crucially he has the deep respect of helmsman Jimmy Spithill alongside the rest of the sailors and is an ever-present on the water with a calming bigger-picture focus as well as being right in the detail.

Hamish Wilcox is an Olympic coaching great as well as being a three-time 470 world champion (with the late David Barnes). His meteorological skills are legendary but equally he can be seen taking the early morning yoga workout with the sailors ahead of racing. Jacopo Plazzi meanwhile is a hugely respected skiff sailor having raced with trimmers Umberto Molineris and Andrea Tesei in the 49er class and has successfully transferred his racing and coaching skills to the AC75 where very often he is co-ordinating the Chase Boat tactics when the Luna Rossa team need to be pushed into tight corners in race training. As a trio they are fully complementary, and the results are there to see.

Ahead of the final Preliminary Regatta, we caught up with all three of the coaches for their take on what levels of performance they are looking to see from their sailing team in this, the first time that the AC75s will race against each other. When asked whether the sailors will tailor racing styles to specific opponents, Philippe as always looked at the bigger picture, saying: “Match racing is like boxing. If you are much stronger it doesn't really matter, but generally you have to adapt your strategy to your opponent. So, what will matter ultimately are the boat’s characteristics (yours and your opponent’s) but also the helmsmen’s skills, behavior and experience through a wide range of wind and sea state conditions.”

Clearly the pre-start is an area where the Italians have worked very hard both in dynamic race training when they pitted their LEQ12 against their AC40 and also into the big boat. Philippe sees the pre-start as key: “During the last Cup in Auckland we saw that these boats are quite hard to overtake in a steady breeze. If you gain the control of the game, you have a good chance of keeping it. So starting in control is our goal. That doesn't mean that you want to kill the match at the start, but you definitely want to be positioned in a way that allows you, early in the race, to force the opponent to increase its number of manoeuvres, sail in bad air or go on the wrong tack for the next shift.”

In recent unofficial training in Barcelona, one of the big take-aways has been the performance of Luna Rossa out of the tacks and gybes. It’s clearly something that the team have worked hard on, and the results are impressive. Philippe confirmed as much saying: “When racing, the boats are sailing half of the time in transition mode, meaning getting ready for a manoeuvre, or exiting a manoeuvre. So yes, it's at the top of our list of skills to be developed. The other one is the mode you are sailing that is affected by the strategy and the other boat. You are rarely at 100% VMG during the race.”

The question around moding the boat through the wide variety of conditions that may be incurred during the Preliminary Regatta and on through the Louis Vuitton Cup and into the October scheduled Louis Vuitton 37thAmerica’s Cup Match, is something that exercises Hamish Wilcox and it’s something that the Luna Rossa team are highly attuned to as he confirmed, saying: “I believe moding the boat will be one of the important differences between the teams racing for the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup. You have to have all the sailing modes in order to control your opponent. In the start area these modes will include very good manoeuvres and boat handling. After the start, being able to gain control of the favoured side of the racecourse will hold the key to winning races.”

Jacopo Plazzi’s take on the competition and how the team will develop over the coming weeks is a marker of just how focussed Luna Rossa are, as a team, saying: “We expect the teams to have small performance differences, the ability to keep improving during these last months and during the race period will be one of the critical success factors. This third generation of AC75s have been sailed for a limited number of days and they still have to show their full potential. There are seconds to be gained on the racecourse in every condition, and this will be even more obvious when racing against an opponent. The weather may also be quite different in the challenger selection series as opposed to the match, and Barcelona offers a variety of conditions. Sails and rig controls will be key to mode the boat on a daily basis, whereas every team will have to make decisions on what foils to use before the start of the series.”

And Jacopo sees August as absolutely key for the team, saying: “August will be the key month to refine our game plan and be ready for the real deal at the end of the month, after many simulator hours and time on the water where we focused mainly on improving our performance and boat handling around the course. During the next weeks we'll finally see the AC75s crossing swords on the same racecourse for some practice racing.”

There is a palpable sense of expectation around the entire Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli team and they know that they have given themselves, in the words of the great America’s Cup winner Dennis Conner, ‘No Excuse to Lose’ – now it’s all about execution when it matters. Hamish summed it the mood in the camp beautifully, saying: “From my perspective I would rather have our boat and equipment than any other team’s. Our designers and builders have done an amazing job getting us to this point and I could not be happier with their final product. Our boat, foils and sails are equal or better than any team. Now it’s time to go racing.”

The third and final Preliminary Regatta starts in Barcelona on the 22nd August and runs through to the final on Sunday 25th August. It’s the first time we will see gloves-off racing in the fastest monohull yachts on the planet. For many it’s too close to call, for Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli it is the first time to really see what all the hard work they’ve put in has achieved. Hard to bet against, the Italians look supreme. Forza Italia!