Dubai: Emirates Team New Zealand overcame the jolt of losing to Aleph on Monday with a one-minute win against bottom-placed Synergy to end at the top of the standings at the end of the preliminary rounds of sailing in the Louis Vuitton Trophy being held at the Viaduct Basin in Auckland.
The home team's race was only one of seven packed into a long, incident-filled day of sailing on Auckland's Waitemata Harbour with Emirates Team New Zealand doing enough to win by a minute and come home with a 6-1 win/loss record after seven matches.
With shifty winds all day ranging from 14 to 20 knots, fortunes changed dramatically with Great Britain's challenger Teamorigin with Olympic champion Ben Ainsley at the helm, losing both its races, while Gavin Brady — the Kiwi skipper of Mascalzone Latino Audi of Italy — kept up the pressure by winning both his races yesterday.
The racing completed the round robin, leaving Emirates Team New Zealand as the top seed, with a 6-1 record, The good show on the final day of round-robin allowed the Mascalzone Latino Audi Team to come in second with a 5-2 record and earn the right to pair up alongside seventh-placed Aleph, while top-placed Emirates Team New Zealand will take on bottom-placed Synergy.
Other pairings
In other pairings for the first elimination round today, fourth seed Azzurra will take on fifth seed Artemis and third seed All4One is pitted against sixth seed Teamorigin.
Artemis starred in the snapshot highlight of the day as their veteran Kiwi mid-bowman David Brooke was swept overboard by a flogging jib sheet but never even got his feet wet. As the sheet hit him in the back, Brooke grabbed it and swung out over the water to be grabbed by his crewmates.
Emirates Team New Zealand had to make up for Monday's disappointing loss to Aleph in front of a passionate home crowd yesterday. With the wind at a healthy 17 knots but alternating, Synergy held on to the lead at the first cross, and pushed the Kiwis back to the right. The Russian boat led for the first two thirds of the leg but then Jablonski was slow to cover. That was the slip Barker was waiting for as he pushed his boat ahead never to look behind.
