Congressional Cup, Richard e Minoprio 5 a 0, Ainslie 0 a 5
Match RaceVela 27 Marzo 2009 Zerogradinord 0
[singlepic=2103,300,204,,left] 45ma Congressional Cup – Long Beach – Giornata di grandi sorprese a Long Beach, dov’è in corso di svolgimento la Congressional Cup, match race tra i più prestigiosi dell’intera stagione agonistica. Capita infatti che, mentre Terry Hutchinson estende la propria leadership grazie a uno score di 13 vittorie e 2 sconfitte, Ben Ainslie, seconda forza della graduatoria sino a ieri, perda tutti i cinque match di cui è protagonista, scivolando al quinto posto di una classifica sempre più corta.
Ad anticipare il talento britannico, con un bilancio di 10 vittorie e 5 sconfitte, l’ottimo Francesco Bruni, raggiunto da Mathieu Richard e Adam Minoprio, capaci di fare esattamente l’opposto rispetto ad Ainslie. Per loro, infatti, 5 vittorie e nessuna sconfitta in un giovedì che, si è capito, ha messo tanta carne al fuoco.
Oggi, infatti, si concluderanno i Round Robin e, al tirar delle somme, saranno solo in 4 ad approdare al turno successivo: semifinali e finali sono in programma domani.
Intanto è stato sfatato il mito del Catalina 37 numero 11. Imbattuto sino ad oggi, lo scafo è finito nelle mani di Johnie Berntsson, sconfitto in 2 dei 5 match disputati. Di contrasto la perfomance della numero 10: sotto con un bilancio di 2 vittorie e 8 sconfitte ha aggiunto al suo score 5 punti negativi. Ad utilizzarla, infatti, un Ainslie che ora è costretto ad inseguire.
CONGRESSIONAL CUP, WHAT A DAY! AINSLIE 0-5, RICHARD AND MINOPRIO 5-0
[Congressional Cup Press Release] A recent series of small earthquakes in the California desert not far away was felt on the water here Thursday.
How else to explain the virtual tsunami that swept over the Long Beach Yacht Club’s 45th Congressional Cup and turned the battle for the Crimson Blazer upside down?
Ben Ainslie lost all five of his races and all but toppled from contention for reaching Saturday’s semifinals. Yes, that Ben Ainslie, the ISAF World Sailor of the Year and triple Olympic gold medalist.
‘Can we [still] get to the top four?’ he asked at the dock.
That tale will be told Friday in the last three of 18 rounds as Ainslie goes to work with an 8-7 record trying to overtake three rivals -France’s Mathieu Richard, the 2007 winner; New Zealand’s Adam Minoprio, who just won the World Match Racing Tour opener at Marseille, and Italy’s Francesco Bruni, a late entry – who share second place at 10-5.
Terry Hutchinson, the 1992 winner and 2008 MedCup champion for Quantum Racing, is in at 13-2 but not mathematically assured of finishing first.
‘If we lose all three of our races and Mathieu wins his, he has the tiebreaker on us,’ Hutchinson pointed out.
And after what happened to Ainslie Thursday, it would seem anything is possible. Even France’s Sébastien Col, the top-ranked match racer, has already missed the shuttle to the sailoffs with a record of 6 1/2 points despite seven wins—the critical half-point deducted for causing damage to Johnie Berntsson’s transom in a pre-start collision.
The Swedish sailor presented Col with a six-inch-long fiberglass splinter at the evening’s press conference.
‘This cost $300,’ Col said, noting the deduction from his damage deposit insurance for the Catalina 37s.
Richard and Minoprio both won all five of their races Thursday, lifting themselves dramatically from so-so performances the first two days. Richard started his day by handing Hutchinson his second loss of the week after slamming the door at the committee boat.
Hutchinson came back to lead at the second (last) windward mark, but Richard stayed close enough to smother his power downwind and retake the lead for a nine-second win that prompted a momentary show of angry frustration from the U.S.’s Rolex Yachtsman of the Year.
‘The boat’s been going very fast and the crew has overcome some of my mediocrity,’ Hutchinson said. ‘I’ll need to do better than that.’
But it was a frustrating type of day that started with 10 knots of wind from southeast and dropped to 5 or 6 as it swung 50 degrees right to the south through the afternoon—so light that there were several key lead changes when trailing boats played their advantage by blanketing the leaders.
Kelvin Harrap, Ainslie’s tactician, said, ‘We led at four top [windward] marks.’
Ainslie said, ‘When we started off the day we were pretty reserved. We got aggressive later.’
Worth noting: While Berntsson managed a lukewarm 3-2 day out of the ‘wonder boat,’ number 11, whose first two teams – Ainslie and Finland’s Staffan Lindberg – went 10-0, Ainslie rotated to boat number 10, which had a 2-8 record going into Thursday. Now it’s 2 and 13.
‘It didn’t feel great,’ Ainslie said, ‘but in match racing you deal with what you’ve got. You can’t blame the boat. It’s the guys sailing it.’
Minoprio’s guys include two known well locally: Rod Davis, the Team New Zealand coach who grew up in nearby Coronado, Calif. to win four Congressional Cups, and Steve Flam, a lifelong Long Beach sailor who probably has sailed more Con Cups and more miles on a Catalina 37 than anyone as tactician for others, including the late Chris Law in 1994.
Davis is calling tactics for the 23-year-old Minoprio; Flam trims the main sail.
Minoprio said, ‘Rod figures out what the wind is doing, tells me how we should start and where we should go and keeps me aware of everything that’s going on. All I have to do is steer. Today we won every start. In these races you can’t make mistakes. We didn’t make mistakes today.’
They won some of their races by coming from behind, as if trailing was almost an advantage.
‘In this light breeze it almost is,’ Minoprio said.
Richard, ranked No. 3 in the world, said, ‘We have improved on a lot of little things . . . the speed of the boat and the tactics.’
As for Ainslie’s nosedive, Richard said, ‘It happens. I don’t know how to explain it.’
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