Emirates Team New Zealand win the 35th America's Cup
by Mark Jardine 26 Jun 2017 20:14 BST
26 June 2017
Emirates Team New Zealand win the 35th America's Cup Match © ACEA 2017 / Ricardo Pinto
Emirates Team New Zealand have won the 35th America's Cup in emphatic fashion. A 7-1 victory over ORACLE TEAM USA was a fair result for the total dominance Peter Burling and his team have shown throughout this campaign.
The Kiwis had to completely rebuild after their devastating defeat in San Francisco, where ORACLE TEAM USA came back from 8-1 down to win the 34th America's Cup. Funding had to be sourced, new personnel recruited and time was short... but the New Zealand team have always proved to be great innovators, and in this they have completely changed the game.
Ahead of the 34th America's Cup in San Francisco it was the Kiwi team who managed to foil the huge AC72 catamarans, but they showed their hand early and the other teams, in particular the defender ORACLE TEAM USA, were able to develop their own foiling technology and, with a huge amount of resource, overtook the New Zealand team on the boat speed front to snatch victory when it looked certain that the cup was heading to New Zealand.
Emirates Team New Zealand learnt from their mistakes. As the 35th America's Cup approached they were training indoors to perfect their 'cyclor' system for generating power, but this was just the start of their innovation. All the other teams had similar L-foils and conventional - or as conventional as a 50ft foiling catamaran can be - control systems. Nearly everything about the New Zealand boat was different: heavily canted foils with marked kinks on horizontal element, extreme rudder elevators and 'X-Box' style controls for Glenn Ashby on the wing trim. They knew they had to be extremely innovative and aggressive on their design philosophy and they've changed the game.
It's not just in the design that Emirates Team New Zealand have proved dominant. On the water they won seven of the nine starts against ORACLE TEAM USA and have been tactically brilliant around the race course. Of course boat speed makes you a tactical genius, but their only real mistake was when they chose not to cover the American team upwind in the one race that they lost.
Peter Burling and Emirates Team New Zealand are truly worthy champions. Jimmy Spithill was magnanimous in defeat and clearly emotional on the water when he congratulated the Kiwis.
A number of questions now arise; when will the next America's Cup be, what will it be sailed in and will the America's Cup World Series continue? Circolo della Vela Sicilia (Luna Rossa) have been announced as the Challenger of Record and the one point that's certain is that it will be held in Auckland. Grant Dalton has promised announcements in the next couple of weeks.