America's Cup update

Despite all the hype and buildup, the America’s Cup has started off not with a bang, as promised , but with a whimper.

With two races down, the New Zealand team is ahead of the Luna Rossa and Artemis teams in the Louis Vuitton series not because they’ve won the races, but because nobody else has turned up.

The Louis Vuitton Cup is the series which will decide who will race against the defenders of the America’s Cup, Oracle Team USA.

As most readers will know, Artemis crashed its 72ft racing catamaran with tragic results and have yet to launch the new boat.

Emirates Team New Zealand and Luna Rossa have both lodged protests with the International Jury regarding race director Iain Murray’s safety recommendations and consequently Luna Rossa is refusing to race until the Jury’s decision is published.

At the time of writing (July 10) Artemis estimates that they won’t be race-ready for another two weeks. This would mean that the Swedish boat would miss about six races from the round-robin series and only race in two or three races before the semi-finals of the Louis Vuitton Cup start on August 6.

Just how this will affect the results, we don’t know, but it’s fairly obvious that they can’t win the Louis Vuitton from there.

So it’ll be down to the Kiwis and the Italians to fight it out to see who will be the official Challenger for the Auld Mug. That is assuming, of course, that the Italian boat makes it to the start line.

Meanwhile, out on San Francisco Bay, New Zealand is looking impressive, hitting a top speed of 43.26 knots and shaving about one minute off their elapsed time around the course compared to Sunday.

As America’s Cup Director of Technology Stan Honey said: "We finally have boats fast enough to get a speeding ticket in a school zone."

Most striking was ETNZ consistently fully foiling through jibes where the boat speed barely dipped below 30 knots.

"We feel we can still improve quite a bit to be honest," said Kiwi tactician Ray Davies after the “race”.

"They’re slick in jibing," said Oracle Team USA’s Murray Jones. "But our programs are different. They have to race now and we don’t have to start racing until September. We’ve been working on our straight-line speed and now we’re moving into the race training portion of our program."

Oracle Team USA was out all morning on Tuesday putting both of its AC72s through their paces.

Artemis Racing’s helmsman Aussie Nathan Outteridge confirmed his team was eager to get on the racecourse and was learning all it could from watching the racing, even when there is just one boat on the course.

"The Kiwis are sailing the boat really nicely. It’s great for us to get the TV footage and see exactly what’s happening on board," he said.

We’ll keep you posted right here on the goings on at the 34th America’s Cup.

For more information go to: www.americascup.com

Photos: ACEA/Gilles Martin-Raget