PORTSMOUTH, UK: SAME CITY, DIFFERENT RACE
The most unpredictable event yet in the America’s Cup World Series. Why? An interruption of Olympic proportion.
A few of the America’s Cup teams will temporarily lose key players as we build up to the Olympic Summer Games next month in Rio de Janeiro. Many of the young America’s Cup studs will compete for medals – Peter Burling and Blair Tuke from Emirates Team New Zealand, as well as Nathan Outteridge and Ian Jensen from Artemis Racing, will all compete in the Men’s 49er. Competing in the Finn class will be Giles Scott, tactician on Land Rover BAR. Scott has missed the past two ACWS events for Olympics practice, however, making his absence less of a shock to Ainslie and the BAR crew in Portsmouth.
With these sailors chasing Olympic glory, new talent will step onboard the boats. It makes sense the teams have put Veteran leaders in crucial on-deck positions – making the crew arguably as strong as before, now with an added element of surprise. When Glenn Ashby (ETNZ) is your stand-in skipper, a 15-time multihull world champion, you are in pretty good hands! The same for Francesco Bruni, filling for Outteridge on Artemis Racing. Bruni was the tactician on Prada for the last cup, he is one of the most talented sailors on the planet!
Even outside of the Olympics commitments, there are interesting crew rotations happening with all of the teams. Lets see how they play out before we make any judgements.
In addition, Portsmouth itself provides an interesting twist for this weekend’s event. Last July we witnessed a fantastic show from the town, region and wider nation. Huge support, massive crowds. Of course there will always be home town pressure, and interestingly for some reason it always seems enhanced with Ainslie and England. Ainslie’s sailing success has built up a super human quality – he can’t loose. But in the past few events he was not first – he did lose. I know his supporters and the amount of passion among English sailing fans. They all mean exceptionally well. I have to ask, is it too strong a praise that they expect him to win? Does the expectation rule anything else a failure? The pressure was on after New York, their poorest finish to date, from which they retaliated in Chicago. It will be interesting to see how Portsmouth plays out for the home team.
Plenty of intrigue, plenty of mystery. Portsmouth will be different, but the million-dollar question is: How different?
