Team Origin advance to the next round

A CLINICAL DISPLAY BY TEAMORIGIN SEES THEM ADVANCE TO THE NEXT ROUND

TEAMORIGIN take an impressive and important race victory against the French/German ALL4ONE team to guarantee their place in the next round tomorrow.


Elimination Round One kicked off today, the eighth day of racing in this exciting and hotly contested Louis Vuitton Trophy Auckland regatta. The competition has been intense and the next two days will be critical for all teams, including TEAMORIGIN.


Race one was between the Swedish Artemis team and the Italian Azzurra team, who finished 5th and 4th respectively, in the Round Robin phase. Artemis took control from the start and took the win by 32 seconds guaranteeing them to move forward into tomorrow’s Elimination Round Two.


Next up was TEAMORIGIN, whose opponent was the French/German team of ALL4ONE. The result of this match was critical for the British team if they were to retain control of their destiny in the competition. If they won the race, they moved forward into tomorrow’s Elimination Round Two; a loss meant they would have to rely on the outcome of the last two races of the day.


After a short postponement due to strong winds increasing to 25 knots, the warning signal was fired at 1245. Conditions had stabilised, down to 17 knots of wind.


It looked like a fairly quiet and conservative start by both teams, but the reality was that Ainslie was at his finest and controlled the speed and lateral separation of TEAMORIGIN to weather of the opponent in the crucial last run to the start gun. The pair crossed at speed on the gun but TEAMORIGIN had been positioned to stay comfortably to windward of the Franco-German boat managing to slowly move forwards for the first part of the beat.



ALL4ONE were first to tack and passed behind the British yacht, TEAMORIGIN followed suit holding the cards for now and keeping the gas on their French competitor. ALL4ONE were forced to tack off again but needed to keep an eye on Bean Rock on the left hand side of the course with its exclusion zone. TEAMORIGIN rounded mark one 17 seconds ahead.

On the first run TEAMORIGIN did a nice gybe after responding to ALL4ONE gybing around the mark, the French guys, however, not managing such a great manoeuvre. Both boats headed downwind and round the leeward gate, the wind was building and TEAMORIGIN were still in command with a lead of 20 seconds around the bottom gate mark but still needing to keep their cool, ALL4ONE still very much in the hunt.



Ian Percy, Tactician, calling the shots for Ben Ainslie, was on the look-out as ever, staying in phase with the wind shifts and the moves of the French/German team. TEAMORIGIN were making it look pretty comfortable, stretching out to almost 5 boat lengths by the second weather mark. But with continuing fresh winds the British team were not relaxing as anything could still happen.



On the last downwind leg, if to prove the point that you can never relax in these boats until you’ve crossed the finish line, TEAMORIGIN suffered a small issue with a spinnaker sheet and tear in the kite. They lost some distance, but they managed to control it and fly the spinnaker off the tack line while they sorted out their problem. Ben Ainslie and his team managed to hold the lead and took the win by 27 seconds – so all in all an impressive demonstration by the British team and a win that ensures they move on to the next round.



Ian Percy, Tactician, commented on the race win, “Ben gave us an excellent start, he really is the best in the business on that front, from there I was confident to head right, we had to keep it tight over such a short race course and from there on in it was a pretty classic match race. “

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