Ineos Britannia struck back against America’s Cup defenders Emirates Team New Zealand with two impressive race wins on Wednesday to keep their hopes of glory alive.
The Kiwis hold a 4-2 advantage after dominating the opening battles in the 37th edition of the competition but Ben Ainslie’s British team finally got on the board off the coast of Barcelona.
Ineos triumphed by one minute 18 seconds in the first race to stop the rot after four consecutive defeats as New Zealand endured a disastrous start in light wind conditions.
Then in a far tighter second race Ainslie and his team held onto a small lead earned at the start to triumph by seven seconds.
“Solid effort from the team today and that was really for everyone… a big team effort to get some performance back, still a long way to go, but the comeback is on,” said Ineos skipper Ainslie.
Ainslie badly needed to gain a foothold in the best-of-13 series which was slipping away from his team after they qualified for the race for the first time in 60 years.
In 2013, Ainslie produced a stunning comeback with Oracle Team USA against New Zealand, coming back from 8-1 down in a 17-race series to win—and Ineos’s victories on Wednesday sparked hope of potentially managing a similar feat.
In the opening tussle the British boat nailed the pre-start while double defending champions New Zealand were late and fell off the foils in Ineos’s dirty air, unable to get started.
Ineos opened up a lead of over 1.5 kilometres in the first leg, finding more wind in the top end of the course.
“It’s a good win for us, tricky on the start, we trained for those situations, we managed to make it stick and get them off the foil, it was pretty tough for them from then on,” said Ainslie.
New Zealand were relying on a mistake from their opponents to have a chance of clawing their way back in, but it was not forthcoming.
“It’s a bit of a shame we couldn’t get across them and dropped off the foils,” said New Zealand helmsman Peter Burling.
“It’s obviously frustrating to be off the foils, we made a little error being a tiny bit too late but it was a bit unlucky.
“That’s sport and I’m looking forward to the next one.”
In the next race with stronger wind, Britain again made a good start, edging ahead of the defender and opening up a small gap of around 80 metres.
By leg five the British extended it to 250 metres maintaining control of the race with New Zealand in pursuit and waiting fruitlessly for any chance to steal back in.
“I don’t think any of us are surprised at all (by Ineos’ comeback), we know they are very good sailors and have a great boat,” said New Zealand’s Nathan Outteridge.
“We didn’t really execute the best day ourselves today, we let ourselves down, we’ll go and review that and come back next time in better shape.”
Britain hosted the inaugural America’s Cup race in 1851 around the Isle of Wight but have never triumphed in the 173 years since.
Ineos Britannia, bankrolled by billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, the co-owner of Manchester United, are dreaming of lifting the world’s oldest international sporting trophy for the first time.
Racing continues on Friday, with New Zealand three victories away from triumph.
