Dubai: Emirates Team New Zealand (ETNZ) finally entered the winning bracket with an outright victory over TeamOrigin on the third day of the Louis Vuitton Trophy being held in La Maddalena, off the island of Sardinia.
With conditions playing truant on the first two days — dying winds on the first day followed by damage to one of the four America's Cup Class yachts on the second — ETNZ had to watch from the support boat.
In all fairness, they should have raced three matches before their duel with TeamOrigin. But the rules place any postponed matches to the end of the round, if time permits, thus putting the team at a disadvantage as they had little time on the water.
Split tack
"The conditions here are new and unpredictable," said ETNZ skipper Dean Barker. "There are a lot of islands surrounding the race areas and it will take some getting used to, we haven't had much time to practice so we're looking forward to getting out there."
The match against the British team, who were basking in their earlier win against BMW Oracle, saw ETNZ start behind their opponent, who took the left hand side of the course after an early split tack. But Barker grabbed the lead at the top mark and then dominated the rest of the race beating TeamOrigin by 15 seconds.
There are 10 teams from eight countries racing in Sardinia. ETNZ come into this event with a fine record following their win in Auckland in March and a second behind Azzurra in Nice in last November.
Top place
Aleph Sailing Team (France), Mascalzone Latino Audi Team (Italy), Artemis (Sweden) and All4One (France/Germany) are in top place with two points each at the end of the third day, while ETNZ (New Zealand), Synergy (Russia), Azzurra (Italy) and TeamOrigin (Great Britain) all have one point and Luna Rossa and BMW Oracle have yet to score.
