By Alexander Smith
BARCELONA (Reuters) -New Zealand extended their America’s Cup lead over Britain to 3-0 in the first-to-seven series on Sunday, after the two boats came within “a matter of centimetres” of clashing foils.
“I don’t think you want to get any closer,” British skipper Ben Ainslie said of the incident in the pre-start, for which his team were penalised by the umpires.
A fourth head-to-head had been due to take place on Sunday, but with an unstable Mediterranean breeze, the race committee abandoned racing for the day and will restart on Monday.
Ainslie’s team, who went into Sunday 2-0 down, were given a distance penalty after failing to keep clear in response to an aggressive close-quarters manoeuvre by New Zealand.
The British boat had to drop 75 metres behind the Kiwis after crossing the line to shake off the penalty, handing the America’s Cup holders an early advantage.
“I thought we did a good job to regroup from that and take the penalty and keep it close up that first leg, but again the Kiwis did a really good job to defend and find the opportunities to extend,” Ainslie told reporters when back ashore.
The 47-year-old, who is the most successful Olympic sailor and renowned for his aggressive approach to racing, said the team were working hard on their performance to make some gains and would take the opportunity for “a bit of a reset”.
The penalty was not what the British needed to bounce back after Saturday’s races, in which New Zealand started better and showed slightly more speed in their foiling AC75 monohull.
“Don’t lose faith, there’s a long way to go in this yet,” Ainslie said when asked if he had a message for supporters of his campaign to “bring the Cup home” to Britain, which has never won in the 173-year history of the “Auld Mug”.
New Zealand’s co-helm Nathan Outteridge said that the starts were “pretty important” because there were few opportunities for the trailing boat to then pass and the team were focusing on them, adding that their AC75 was going “pretty fast”.
“It’s nice to get all the things coming together at the moment,” Outteridge told reporters of New Zealand’s defence against Britain, who have won the right to challenge for the America’s Cup for the first time in 60 years.
“We’ll see how it unfolds from here,” Outteridge said.
(Reporting by Alexander Smith; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise and Pritha Sarkar)
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