Alinghi beats TEAMORIGIN. Image copyright Alinghi.
by Daphne Morgan-Barnicoat
Alinghi vs. TeamOrigin
Gold Fleet, Match 1
Alinghi: port entry
Alinghi drew NZL84
Forecast: NE 7 knots
Alinghi beat the British squad TeamOrigin in the opening match of Round Robin 2 by 15 seconds today – the win was hard fought: Alinghi, on port, had an even start getting off the line to windward and just a few metres behind TeamOrigin. The Swiss raced up the right-hand side of the course to round the first top mark 15seconds behind. At the gate TeamOrigin had extended their lead to 20seconds, but Alinghi fought back up the windward leg regaining ground and rounding close on the Brit’s stern. Alinghi kept the pressure on downwind and in the approach to the finish line passed TeamOrigin to cross the line 15seconds ahead.
Quote from the race boat – Ed Baird, Alinghi helmsman, gives some insight:
Q: Congratulations on a win against TeamOrigin on day 1 of RR2 – can you talk us through it?
EB: "In a light air pre-start you are starting behind the curve when you enter from the port end so we were happy to just be able to get out of jail and be able to circle around on the line. The TeamOrigin guys did a fine job of getting the left side of things. Brad was happy part of the way through the pre-start to let them get the left and said to me to make sure to get enough separation to the right. We got off the line, gained a little, lost a little and tacked away – we sailed off to the right, got a 20degree right-hand shift, tacked on it and were two boat lengths behind which was very strange! From there we played the game that you have to when you are behind; keep the pressure on the other guys and see whether they will make a mistake. On the last run we were able to put the pressure on them, take their wind and that was the race. Both Brad and the whole crew worked very hard to make that happen – the guys did a great job of handling someone else’s boat in a lot of tricky situations."
Q: Alinghi did a few s-bends at the top mark – can you explain to us ashore what happened?
EB: "At the 2nd windward mark our boats were coming pretty close to each other, TeamOrigin went into a bit of a dial down towards us – like we did in the last race of the last America’s Cup – and we were expecting that; we saw what they were doing and made the move to turn up and it turned out we were crossing in front of them, but not by enough to get ahead at the mark. They came around, tacked underneath us at the mark onto port and got back in control again – but they were slow, so my question was: roll over the top of them? Or tuck in behind them? Going over the top didn’t look like an option so I went in behind and they tried to close the door on us at the mark, so I had to take a little s-turn and it slowed us down, but I couldn’t afford to take the risk and go in there and get penalised."
Q: And finally a look at tomorrow – Day 2 of RR2?
EB: "Tomorrow we are sailing Damiani Italia and we haven’t sailed them yet, so it’s going to be an interesting experience. Of course we don’t yet know what end we will enter on and which boat we will draw – we’ll just have to wait and see."
Alinghi
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