Sir Ben Ainslie’s America’s Cup dream for Britain takes a hammering as his boat Britannia loses opening four races of Prada Cup final against Italians Luna Rossa
- Sir Ben Ainslie’s dream of winning the America’s Cup for Britain suffered setback
- The British challengers lost the opening four races of the Prada Cup final
- Ainslie’s team trail Italians Luna Rossa in first-to-seven series for place in cup
Sir Ben Ainslie’s dream of winning the America’s Cup for Britain took a hammering off Auckland Harbour when his boat Britannia lost the opening four races of the Prada Cup final.
The British challengers trail Italians Luna Rossa in the first-to-seven series that will determine who takes on holders Team New Zealand in the 36th edition of the world’s oldest international competition next month.
It now requires Ainslie’s famed powers of recovery to breathe life into his crew’s faltering bid.
Sir Ben Ainslie’s bid to seal America’s Cup glory for Britain suffered setback in Prada Cup final
On Sunday, they suffered two bad starts, though they just survived momentarily losing control during the second pre-start and ‘wheelieing’ out of the water.
However, the Ineos-backed team have a slight reprieve because Wednesday’s two races have been postponed by a snap lockdown in Auckland.
Unlike in Saturday’s opening rounds, there was a decent breeze that played to Britannia’s strengths but they ‘got greedy’, in Ainslie’s words, by trying unsuccessfully to ‘hook’ Luna Rossa and thus allowed the Italians a lead of some 60 metres off the line, which led to defeat by 13 seconds.
His boat Britannia lost opening four races in first-to-seven series against Italians Luna Rossa
In the second race, after the spectacular wheelie, they let the opposition take a slight advantage at the start and the Italians, co-helmed by Jimmy Spithill and Francesco Bruni, matched Britannia — who were given a penalty for exceeding the course limits — at every turn for another win.
Skipper Ainslie said: ‘We’re not happy with it. We can sail a hell of a lot better and we will need to. We gave two races to those guys off the start line. To their credit they sailed well and didn’t give us a chance to get back into it.’