Portsmouth (United Kingdom) (AFP) – Victory at the America’s Cup World Series in Portsmouth gave Ben Ainslie’s British Land Rover BAR a massive boost just 10 months ahead of the 35th America’s Cup which kicks off in Bermuda in May next year.
But two further world series events in 2016 in Toulon and Fukuoka could see a further shake up to the leaderboard as Olympic sailors, missing in Portsmouth, return to their teams fresh from their Rio campaigns and development programmes on the larger vessels, to be used in Bermuda 2017, start to take shape.
Emirates Team New Zealand who started the Portsmouth event as series leaders were without key 49er sailors Peter Burling and Blair Tuke while Artemis Racing, the Swedish campaign was missing skipper Nathan Outteridge who is also preparing for Rio.
In Toulon, the Kiwis will be back to full strength and back in contention while the British boat will welcome back gold medal contender Giles Scott to maintain the edge they shared in Portsmouth with Oracle Team USA.
But this advantage may amount to nothing once racing gets underway at the next event, warned skipper Jimmy Spithill.
“We had the edge in Portsmouth but in New York and Chicago, both Ben and I were off the podium so the results highlight the fact that the teams are all putting a lot more time on the water,” said Spithill.
“He has missed a lot of time through damage — they have had a lot of accidents here with their development boat so it will be interesting to see whether that costs him.
“The big focus for us is Bermuda but we want the bonus point from this series and the great news is we are only one point off the lead now. We came into this a long off Emirates Team New Zealand and now they have dropped back and we are one point away with Toulon and Japan still to go so we are really happy with how the guys are sailing.”
For Franck Cammas, skipper of Groupama Team France regarded as one of the most improved teams in the fleet, the chance to perform in front of a home crowd in Toulon will be a boost for the French campaign.
“Next week we will launch our new test boat so we can train more and spend more time on it and see what happens in Toulon,” he said.
“We will get good support from the crowds there and Toulon is a very good venue with good winds sometimes so hopefully we will put on a good show.”
The win over Spithill raises Land Rover BAR’s profile as a contender for the ACWS title and has given Ainslie a glimpse of what might lie ahead between now and next June when the America’s Cup finals get underway.
“We would love to be team challenging Jimmy in the final but they are the defenders and a very strong team so they will be hard to beat. But that is our goal,” he said.