The French are back at the top table of competition and are building an impressive challenge from the ground up. For sure, they are well aware that time is the great enemy of any America’s Cup challenge and, as the last to launch their campaign, they know that what is before them will be tough. However, look around the Orient Express Team and there is talent in every corner. On the water they have the exciting helming partnership of Quentin Delapierre and Kevin Peponnet, and the trim team of Jason Saunders and Mathieu Vandame are gelling well.
Performance is coming and in the recent sessions they have looked accomplished and confident on the water, executing manoeuvres and pushing their stunning AC75 at race pace – for certain all the other Challengers are eyeing their progress eagerly. Extracting the considerable French potential is Team Coach Thierry Douillard’s ambition and as a top-flight, high-performance multihull and foiling sailor himself, he can call on a wealth of knowledge as well as huge trust to drive the team to their peak.
Ahead of the final Preliminary Regatta in Barcelona, we caught up with Thierry to try and understand their game-plan for the regatta and what they hope to achieve. With refreshing honesty, he summarised where the team are at right now, saying: “For sure our boat was the latest on the water, we spent quite a bit of time on the commissioning and next we move towards the racing side and then it is racing around the course. We are still on track, and we are following a road map and for sure we are not ahead, but we are moving forward day by day and have a good learning curve.”
With the Cup world eager to see the performance profile of Orient Express Racing Team, the French are keeping close counsel and very much working on themselves as Thierry says: “Right now to be fair we do not have a fully strict clear idea about the opponents. They will for sure have some difference in their moding for example and will figure out ways in the coming days, the coming weeks before the start. Right now, we are more focused on ourselves and learning how to be stronger and stronger each day.”
Moding could well make the difference and the speed with which teams will be able to adjust the nuances of the AC75 could be the fine line between winning and defeat. It’s an area that the French have always been attuned to, especially when conditions get light and tricky and where they could easily spring some big surprises. Go back to the first race of the AC40 Preliminary Regattas where it was displacement sailing in Vilanova i La Geltrú and we all remember that it was the French that won the first race. It’s something not lost on Thierry as he explained: “We have had 27 or 28 days of sailing now so we do not have experience in all the conditions, particularly the strong breeze, but we have started to have the light winds like yesterday and then today, which we love a lot and so are starting to have a better view of our moding in different conditions and I repeat myself, but we learn more each day and the goal is to be better tomorrow than we are today.”
Expected deltas between the boats and outright speeds are looking to be very tight and the pre-start could be an area where fireworks fly as the AC75s jostle for position. The French will be eyeing this with much anticipation and have been preparing hard as Thierry explains: “We are working on a playbook with different tools. We have some simulator, a lot of talking together, some testing on the water. The start line is pretty narrow, so we have to find the good tricks to be able to have a good start and not make big mistakes. We are in that phase, working on it and working on the playbook with the AC75 and it is moving forward.”
The opening day of the Preliminary Regatta will see Orient Express Racing take on Alinghi Red Bull Racing in the first race and then Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli in the final flight of the day on the 22nd August. It will be the first time that the team will have had the opportunity to line-up officially against another AC75 and again, Thierry is honest about their prospects, saying: “Right now, we have never done a pure line-up compared with the others because it is against the rules, so we will see in the coming practice races how confident we are. We have a big margin in how we are timing the boats, so we are working hard with the engineers, with the performance, with Franck Cammas, with Benjamin Muyl, with everyone to be better every day. We can’t know right now if we have a speed deficiency. It would absolutely be honest to say that we do not have a fast boat, we just have to learn it and use it at 100%.”
Thierry is very much keeping expectations in check as he, and the team, are well aware of the huge preparations that have been put in over the past three years by the other syndicates. As the last team to launch, there’s a sense of realism but also a swashbuckling Gallic flair that could well surprise. For now, Thierry is pleased with performance saying: “We are on a big and nice learning curve. We are improving every day, and we are confident in the fact that we are going to improve. We will be more reliable, more precise, will be more able to play our playbook and our settings. Our sailors are in the mindset that they want to be on the water every day and learn new things to be better than the day before. To say we are confident right now ahead of the Preliminary Regatta, is wrong, because there is a huge amount of work ahead of us, but we are confident in the fact that we are adjusting the gap quite quickly and that the boat will be ready, will be competitive and to learn race after race to go to the end.”
The dark horses of both the Preliminary Regatta and the Louis Vuitton Cup, Orient Express Racing are one of the great stories of this Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup. As a team they are building to the future but don’t bet against them taking some serious scalps and making a lot of friends along the way. The French back in the America’s Cup is good for the event and they enjoy magnificent support back home from a sailing mad nation. They will be very interesting to watch.