America’s Cup: New Zealand close to perfection, one point away from making history | Sport

After the doubts came a reaction. And what an answer! Team New Zealand crushed Ineos Britannia this Friday after Black Wednesday (they suffered two defeats) which ended the America’s Cup final. The Kiwis didn’t want any more surprises and were extremely decisive on day five of the finals. Two more victories in one pocket to put into another Hundred Guineas jug. At 6-2, the Kiwis are just one win away from winning the title for the third time in a row and becoming a legendary team this Saturday on Barcelona’s sixth day. Never before had the same team won three tournaments in a row in 173 years of competition.

The competition had an additional ingredient: the weather had an unpleasant surprise in store for the AC75. Initially, the wind blew from the west, from west to east, according to an unusual scenario for this edition. When the wind blows inland, it becomes more uneven as the orography of the city itself creates turbulence that eventually reaches the open sea. And in a competition in which the crew lives by searching for good gusts of wind, the unevenness of the wind was uncomfortable for sailing. “Sometimes we were gusting eight knots, sometimes 13 knots,” explains Nathan Outteridge, Team New Zealand helmsman. Regulations allow competition to be held at speeds from 6.5 to 21 knots, and Kiwis have always noticed where the good pressure spots are hidden.

The British dream of return soon ended. Having won two races on Wednesday and turned a painful 4-0 into a respectable 4-2, the Ineos Britannia fans turned to the spirit of San Francisco (USA), the city where Ben Ainslie, the British team’s helmsman and leader, was born. , achieved In 2013, they overcame a 1–8 deficit to win the Copa America final 9–8, one of the greatest comebacks in the history of top-level sport.

But American dreams do not exist in Catalonia, because Barcelona is not San Francisco, and the desires disappeared a little over 1.5 nautical miles along the regatta route. Having only completed the first stage of two races (the first was held over six stages and the second over eight), Team New Zealand had already disappeared from Ainslie’s radar, unable to close the gap that was gradually widening. Nothing to do.

The final difference between both teams exceeded one minute in the first test and remained at 55 seconds in the second, an astronomical distance in the final of the world’s largest sailing competition. “It was a perfect regatta, no mistakes; We are sailing like never before,” admitted Ray Davies, the New Zealand coach, in a television broadcast during the final regatta. History awaits you on Saturday.