Frustrating racing on Day 2 of Louis Vuitton Cup for Alinghi Red Bull Racing

Today was a frustrating Day 2 in the Louis Vuitton Cup for Alinghi Red Bull Racing. In another day of marginal conditions, the Swiss Challenger’s match against NYYC American Magic saw the boats struggling to foil in light airs. Race officials repeatedly shortened the course after the start and ultimately cut the race to four legs, with the American Challenger displacing across the finish line as the Swiss team’s hopes to mount a comeback vanished.

In Barcelona’s light conditions today, it wasn’t sure whether racing would happen at all for Day 2 of the Challenger Selection Series. In the end, it was just Alinghi Red Bull Racing and NYYC American Magic who lined up on the start line, and in the light airs both teams spent a significant portion of the race off their foils, waiting for wind to pick up and regain momentum. As conditions failed to improve, the race committee repeatedly shortened the course, reducing it six times in the span of 12 minutes, from 1.3 nautical miles down to 0.9 nautical miles. On the fourth leg, to keep the race duration within limits, race officials decided to cut the race down to just four legs. Shortly after, the American boat drifted over the finish line in displacement mode, with Alinghi Red Bull Racing following just under 3 minutes later, putting the final race duration at 34 minutes. As these mid-race changes to the course parameters can affect tactical decisions, it was a frustrating result for the Swiss Challenger as their chance to turn the race around vanished.

All other matches today were cancelled due to lack of wind.

Rodney Ardern, Sailing Team Manager: “The biggest frustration of today, when you're trying to chase the other boat around the course, is when the race committee shortens the course with the objective of getting a 23-minute race. We have a 45-minute time limit in the rules, so we all struggle to understand what the urgency is to shorten the races even while you're on that leg of the course. We understand you can shorten the legs—range and bearing of the marks—during the race, but today we had multiple length changes of the course while boats were already on that leg. On an ever-shrinking course, that made it virtually impossible to catch up, which is super frustrating.

We're all here to race against each other. Unfortunately today, we were both racing against challenging conditions and congrats to American Magic who managed them better than us. They had the same issues; they were on and off the foils as well. In that respect, it's swings and roundabouts. As we said, it was a lottery. For the next few days, I think we're hoping to have good, fair racing and good conditions. Hopefully, all the racing can happen and we get some quality races for both the competitors and the spectators.”

Nils Theuninck, Cyclor: “I would say the learning from today is to stay out of the gas of the other boats in these light winds. It’s been hard to train for that in the last two years because we've been training alone. Today’s race was all about staying on the foils – or getting back flying again – so we had to ensure the Driving Group always had enough power to trim the sails as they wanted. It was a really strong effort from the cyclors in today’s race, and we had plenty of power in the tank, but obviously a disappointing result. There’s still a lot of racing ahead of us, so let's make every race count.”