Issue date
This week marks two years since the final stages of the Louis Vuitton Cup round robin in San Francisco in 2013.
A long time between races by any stretch of an America’s Cup cycle. There have been many changes in that time for Emirates Team New Zealand, the obvious one being the new look sailing team for the first Louis Vuitton America’s Cup World Series in Portsmouth. A mix of invaluable experience in Glenn Ashby and Ray Davies, and the four new faces to appear under the large red Emirates wing sail are Guy Endean, Harry Thurston, Blair Tuke and Peter Burling who bring a new approach to America’s Cup racing instinctive, intuitive and fearless.
Having to put on a pair of shoes rather than his trademark jandals would phase Burling more than facing up to some of the biggest names in world sailing.
“It doesn’t matter who we are sailing against. There is always a big deal made up of the personal match ups of the skippers. For us its just another boat with some other guys on board that we want to sail better than.” Said Burling.
“Once the gun goes, talk and hype is irrelevant, it’s who is the best one the water on any given race, they walk away with the goods. Not much else matters really.”
It is this attitude, which Burling and Tuke have developed a fearsome reputation for in the 49er class- thriving on pressure and uncertainty, remianing unbeaten in the class since their silver medal at the London 2012 Olympic games.
But this is the America’s Cup, no shortage of additional interest, intrigue and pressure to perform from the start. Things skipper Glenn Ashby has seen all before and knows the importance of all races now counting towards the eventual Louis Vuitton cup qualification rankings in 2017, but also keeping things in perspective towards that vital end goal.
“In the end the America’s Cup is all about who can deal with things the best when things are against you.” explained Ashby. “ It’s pretty obvious that as a team we have had a whole lot against us in the past two years, so much so that most teams would have shut the doors and called it a day. For us to come through everything and be sitting here about to compete with one of the most exciting sailing teams I have been involved with, I feel we will be pretty strong.”
“Although in saying this, you have to manage expectations and keep in mind we have only sailed together as a team for a handful of days. For us this regatta is definitely a development exercise. A podium finish will be a pretty good result for us. This event will not make or break an America’s Cup campaign, but making sure we take a big step up as a team and continue this momentum towards 2017 will.”
The Louis Vuitton America’s Cup World Series events are only 4 races. If you are having a bad day, it’s going to be a really bad day because there isn’t much of an opportunity to steadily improve. You have to start hot and stay hot or you are out the back.
The start gun can’t come soon enough for Emirates Team New Zealand.
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