News Around the World
Good to be back… though for some Vendée Globe skippers the end of the race can be something of an anti-climax – not surprisingly. Top: she left the UK for Les Sables as a virtual unknown among her rivals and race spectators alike but Pip Hare returned a star, her toughness, great strategies, superb communications and above all her good humour in a crisis winning over thousands of new fans. Above: another Vendée hero – Kojiro Shiraishi got round in one piece on his foiler DMG Mori after a string of technical difficulties in the first weeks which left him thousands of miles behind the leaders. Throughout his travails Shiraishi made it abundantly clear that he was going to finish however long it took – yet another Vendée adventure and good stories to be shared when back home in Japan. Right: relief writ large across the faces of Arnaud Boissières and his young son after the ancient ex-Ecover makes it around yet again
both featured Herculean efforts by their respective shore teams for different reasons and with very different outcomes on the water. In the three weeks from their dismal performance in the pre-
Christmas event to the start of the Prada Cup in mid-January the Ineos shore team worked like demons. Apart from Christmas Day it was a round-the-clock effort as they brought on a raft of new equipment and modifications, including streamlining foil wings and aerodynamics with assistance from the Mercedes F1 team. Persistent rumours that Emirates Team New Zealand also helped
with the transformation were dismissed with a terse ‘no comment’ from the defender. ‘The whole boat had a makeover,’ said Ainslie. ‘Every component has been changed.’ Claiming the performance had improved by a remarkable 10 per
cent, Ainslie reckoned the serious drubbing the British crew received in the pre-Christmas regatta was a positive. ‘Without that we might have bluffed ourselves into thinking one or two tweaks would be enough.’ He laughed off any suggestion of sandbagging. ‘It has been a tough ride,’ he said. ‘If we were sandbagging we did a bloody good job of it.’ The American rescue mission came after their dramatic capsize,
26 SEAHORSE
which saw the often fractious Cup community rushing to assist a mortally wounded fellow warrior. With 16 pumps expelling water and the boat supported by a raft-up of team RIBs, inflatable buoys, wrap-around liferafts and anything that would aid buoyancy, the punctured AC75 made the slow journey home in the dark. In the midst of the chaos and concern the images of an ETNZ
chase boat delivering pizza to the chilled American crew added a human touch. ‘Anything you need,’ was Grant Dalton’s offer of support, which was taken up as ETNZ boatbuilders set about laminating replacement panels for the rebuild in a desperate race to make the semi-final. With nobody injured, the capsize added the spice of drama to
the proceedings, highlighting the wafer-thin line between control and disaster. Footage of the boat launching into the air and crashing down, seconds after Paul Goodison’s urgent double warning against the ‘hard manoeuvre’, was constantly replayed and dissected. But the summer racing programme, which was drawing huge and
enthusiastic audiences, suffered when the challenger trio was suddenly down to just two competitors. The third round-robin became a lame duck. Ineos and Luna Rossa completed a single match
OLIVIER BLANCHET/ALEA
RICHARD LANGDON/OCEAN HARE
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