America’s Cup 2021: Blow for the New Zealand team when leaving practice races

The New Zealand team’s plan to test itself against opposition in the first official practice race before the America’s Cup World Series was thwarted twice on Monday, after light winds forced the cancel the Kiwi syndicate race against Ineos Team UK, before the British ship retired. of a second run in the last minute.

The New Zealand team was set to face Ben Ainslie’s crew shortly before 3pm on Monday, after official practice races were suspended on Friday following the decision of the three rivals to stay out of the water, but the practice race had to be canceled when the time limit expired in a breeze of only about 8 knots.

The two teams were ready to meet at 4:45 pm, but the British withdrew just after the pre-outing, leaving TNZ navigating the race course on their own. TNZ climbed to the top mark and returned to the finish line before the race was abandoned because the British withdrew during pre-start.

The move further fueled speculation that the UK union is playing mind games or, more likely considering its lack of racing in recent weeks, experiencing serious hydraulic problems, something Ben Ainslie’s team denied at the weekend.

To make matters worse, the rest of the day’s scheduled races were abandoned just minutes after Ineos failed to start due to insufficient wind speed.

Each team was supposed to compete twice today against the island of Rangitoto, and the Italian union Luna Rossa previously achieved a comfortable victory against American Magic in the only completed race of the day.

The Defender TNZ has been the most impressive since it launched its second generation AC75 Te Rehutai three weeks ago.

Over the weekend, TNZ’s Peter Burling gave a glimpse of what it’s like to sail the boat, revealing the struggle to maintain control at high speeds.

TNZ spent the weekend practicing at Waitematā harbor before the World Series starting Thursday and the Christmas Cup regatta on Sunday.

Although he was hesitant to give exact figures on the speed of the new boat, Burling said it was “unbelievable” how fast they had sometimes come.

“The best way to understand speed is to compare it to the boats we were racing in Bermuda, and they are significantly faster than that,” Burling told Martin Devlin of Newstalk ZB. “This time it’s almost as big a jump as it was from the five-boat version after the [catamarans] in performance “.