Full face helmets, crews bouncing and sprinting across their lightweight and fast-accelerating new boats… but there’s still room for some serious old-school match racing (above) although with a new and much more modern twist. The change in ownership of the World Match Racing Tour and the switch to a multihull platform has both re-energised the circuit and brought it back into harmony with the biggest match race of them all – the America’s Cup. A lack of jibs on the M32 cats only adds to the aggressive possibilities
submitting yourself to the learning process in your next match.
‘A lot of new scenarios are developing as you go around the racetrack,’ says the young Kiwi. ‘We’re still learning the play- book. Or rather we’re writing it as we go along and trying to make the most of every practice opportunity; the more you practise, the more instinctive you become at making the right moves.’
In Copenhagen Steele went out relatively early in the competition, falling 3-1 to M32 rookie Iker Martínez in their Super 16 knockout round. Where others booked early planes home, though, Steele stuck around to learn as much as he could from the shore. He wants to minimise the loss of experience compared with those who pro- gressed to the later rounds. ‘The further on into the competition they get, the more and more practice they get in the M32, and right now time in the boats is massive.’ Some of the old rules of match racing are irrelevant, as a number of skippers have found to their cost. Trying to execute a slam-dunk or a lee-bow tack on your trailing opponent is extremely risky and will mostly result in you getting rolled… to windward or to leeward. Williams, the six- time match racing world champion in keel- boats, looked to have it all worked out in Fremantle where he dropped just one match in the whole of the competition. It was a very different story when he was taken to 2-2 by young Australian Evan Walker in Copenhagen. Williams did clinch the final race to go through to the quarter-finals but went no further after losing 3-1 to Yann Guichard and Spindrift. Whereas the likes of Williams, Taylor Canfield, Johnie Berntsson and other expe- rienced match racers have been working hard to learn the ropes in high-speed multi hull racing, Guichard typifies the other kind of sailor who has been drawn to the Tour this season. He has almost no
match racing experience, but brings other vital skills to the party. The lifelong multi- hull sailor has campaigned Tornados for the Olympics, steered AC45s and Extreme 40s, and skippered Spindrift 2 in the giant trimaran’s attempt on the Jules Verne Trophy last winter. In fact, the quiet Frenchman was the most consistent per- former during the early part of the season, being the only skipper to reach the semi- finals both in Fremantle and Copenhagen. But in Denmark his run came to an end up against Canfield and US One. The tal- ented skipper from the US Virgin Islands is arguably the most complete package on the Tour at this stage, with both great match racing pedigree, including the 2013 world title, and a good 18 months’ experience of M32 racing.
In the final Canfield was
pushed hard by another sailor with great pedigree, Iker Martínez, but who has next to no match racing experience. The Spaniard drew on all the talent that has yielded gold and silver 49er medals at the Olympics, and his tenacity gained from skippering three Volvo Ocean Race campaigns. But Can- field’s superior firepower in the M32, and in the pre-start, won through in the end. However, even Canfield very nearly came unstuck against American skipper Sally Barkow and her female crew on Team Magenta in their Copenhagen quar- ter-final battle – a tussle that went down to the final mark of the fifth and final match. Ominously, Canfield had been sniffy about what he perceived to be a comedy of errors between Barkow and Johnie Bernts- son in their previous match which also went down to the wire. Multiple lead changes in every match had left that outcome in doubt until the very last gasp before Barkow fist pumped her way through to the quarters, much to the whoops and delights of a Copenhagen crowd who wanted to see the one female skipper go as far as possible against 19 male opponents.
In the last two matches against Canfield it looked as if Barkow could again square it away and book her place in the final four. But US One has always prided itself on a ‘never say die’ attitude and this, com- bined with a lucky gust, carried Canfield past the hapless, drifting Team Magenta, eliminating Barkow from the competition. No fist pump this time from the American, but a helmet ripped off her head and flung down on the trampoline in frustration. For Steele watching on, he shared Barkow’s anguish but also made some solid tactical observations. ‘The default move is you’ve got to make sure you pro- tect the inside at the final turning mark to the finish,’ he said afterwards. ‘The girls could have won the last two matches if they’d done a gybe-set at the top of the final run to get in phase with Taylor.’ The most counterintuitive move, now that the boundaries are there, is to choose the opposite rounding mark to the side that you believe to be favoured. ‘Normally you’d go around the gate that takes you to the favoured side,’ says Steele, ‘but now the game’s a lot more about “where you are willing to give up time now, to get a gain later on?” One of those potential gains is to go to the opposite rounding mark so that you can tack over later and spend more time on the favoured side of the course before you reach the boundary.’ Some skippers don’t like the boundaries, full stop. But it looks as if they’re here to stay. And for the grand finale in Marstrand, where the winner becomes the 2016 world champion and takes away a cool $1million in prizemoney, the boundaries will be real… hard lumps of ancient Swedish rock that will come off a good deal better out of a collision than a carbon M32 catamaran.
The game has changed and in Marstrand we’ll see which team has pulled off the best transformation to meet the new demands of the World Match Racing Tour.
q SEAHORSE 39
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