Luna Rossa left no room for doubt on the final day of the Louis Vuitton 38th America's Cup Preliminary Regatta in Naples, winning both fleet races before dismantling Emirates Team New Zealand in the match-race final to take the regatta overall.
Tens of thousands of fans lined the Race Village, with thousands more watching from boats on the water, and they had plenty to cheer.
Peter Burling and Marco Gradoni, sailing with Maria Giubilei and Gianluigi Ugolini, never once trailed at a marker buoy across all three races.
The first fleet race told the story early. Luna Rossa shot into a lead of several hundred metres almost immediately and controlled the race from the front. Behind them, Emirates Team New Zealand had their hands full with La Roche-Posay Racing Team, who had been impressive all weekend on pace and tactics.
The French sailed hard across all five legs, and the Kiwis had to work for every metre to hold them off. It wasn't until the final windward leg that Emirates Team New Zealand found the tactical leverage to break clear, securing second and a spot in the match-race final. By then Luna Rossa were long gone.
The second race mattered little for the top two on paper, but Burling and Gradoni wanted more than a formality. They led from the start, went right to the boundary, and never gave it up. Behind them the real fight was for the final podium spot, and for the Women & Youth title.
Tudor Team Alinghi, third overnight, lost touch after the first windward leg. La Roche-Posay pounced, sailing with real boatspeed and sharp communication to stay in touch with the Italians, though never close enough to threaten. Luna Rossa took the win, and La Roche-Posay celebrated across the line for third overall.
Further back, the Women & Youth title came down to the wire. Jake Pye, skipper of Emirates Team New Zealand's Women & Youth crew alongside co-helm Erica Dawson, tracked Margherita Porro and Max Antoniazzi in the Italian boat all the way down the final leg. The Kiwis edged ahead, gybed cleanly right on the line, and took the title, a strong sign ahead of next year's Women's and Youth America's Cup.
Then came the final everyone had been waiting for.
Luna Rossa chose the port side of the startline, forcing ETNZ to bear away on starboard from the right-hand marker ten seconds later. Early on, ETNZ pushed hard to get on the Italians' stern, and the two boats fought it out high above the line on the right of the course. ETNZ found a promising hook to leeward on the approach back to the line, but it didn't stick.
With no other option, Nathan Outteridge and co-helm Seb Menzies tacked away towards the starboard end of the line. Luna Rossa crossed at full pace and never let go of the initiative.
That was the turning point. Luna Rossa covered the tack out to the right boundary, then sat on ETNZ's wind, forcing the Kiwis into dirty air they simply couldn't escape. Burling and Gradoni sailed it by the book, offering no passing lane at all. The pattern repeated leg after leg, with ETNZ trying every tactical split at the gates and finding the Italians glued to their wind each time.
By the final upwind leg Luna Rossa had stretched out to more than 200 metres, their boat-handling flawless throughout.
Gradoni took the wheel for the bear-away at the top gate, and from there the result was academic. Gybe for gybe, Luna Rossa extended to around 350 metres by the finish. The Race Village held its breath anyway before Luna Rossa sailed the perfect layline and took the gun, and the regatta overall.
"Today was a big day for our team, and I think we managed to finish the job that we started since the practice racing, and many months ago when we started this journey with Pete, Maria, and Gigi," said Gradoni. "I think we showed to the world that at this event, we were the best by far, and I'm super happy with the result. Today was sea breeze conditions, and it's the day that you can control more compared to the northeast breeze. In the final we did the perfect start, we did the perfect race, and we won."
He reflected too on the disappointment of Sardinia back in May 2026. "It's a big emotion to me because me and Maria suffered a lot some months ago, and it's really nice to see all the supporters there at the main stage cheering us, and I think they will cheer us a lot next year. It's nice... I think Luna Rossa has a big chance to win the America's Cup."
Outteridge, unsurprisingly, was disappointed. He pinpointed the moment the final slipped away. "I think you always feel disappointed when you come up a little bit short, and we had that feeling at the last event. In this event, we really were a lot better prepared for it in terms of the match racing side of things and probably compromised a little bit of our fleet racing performance to focus on the match racing. So, you sit here and reflect on the match race. We actually were pretty happy with how our final position was going into the start, we really wanted to go to the right as we thought the right was going to be quite strong, and we needed to tack earlier. That was the reality of it. We were pushing them into the pin; we were both early and just the little execution of the exact moment we needed to lead the turn-up tack and take the right. We were trying to stay unlocked. So, we were trying not to get overlapped above and below. But Pete (Burling) and the Luna Rossa guys did a good job of dragging the game quite low. And when you drag it low, time disappears quite quickly, and by the time we tacked, we were late for the boat. So, those guys are really good in the AC40s. We've seen that this event, the last event, the amount of two-boating they get to do. And we probably suffered just a little bit from just not executing the details well enough to beat them this week."
Jake Pye was pleased with his Women & Youth crew's title, though clear-eyed about the gaps to close before next year's Youth America's Cup. "I really had no idea what the points were until that last race. I'm happy with the result, but definitely we had a few hiccups. If we take the good times that we had and the ones we managed to put together, I think if we could have kept it simple and averaged it out, we could've done quite well. But that aside, we played it pretty cool, and it was all in, to the end. So definitely, I am looking to the future for the Youth America's Cup, but also, I'm going to be there to try and play my part and push these guys (the senior team) as hard as I can into the America's Cup."
Quentin Delapierre, skipper of La Roche-Posay Racing Team, had every reason to be satisfied with a regatta many felt showcased some of the best racecraft on the water. "I think overall it's really nice for the whole team. Not only the sailors, but also the large racing team, the whole structure. We've been thinking a lot about how we want to work as a team, and I think we showed that this week, we can be super accurate and powerful. So yeah, I'm super happy. A little bit 50/50 on the result, because I think we show some really nice strengths through the weekend, but unfortunately, we did not achieve consistent boat handling, with those two capsizes. I'm not sure we could do anything on the second one, but obviously we did capsize, so we need to figure out how it happened... but we have a vision, and we want to put it together. The structure, I truly believe is very good, but as with everything and with every challenge, you need to make sure that you stick to the plan, and that's our challenge."
Lucas Calabrese of ARC Team USA called it a rollercoaster regatta, but one that leaves the team energised. "It kind of felt like a rollercoaster to me. We were a little bit inconsistent, and a lot of it was self-inflicted, which is a good thing because that means if we clean up a few things, we can be up there with the top teams. So overall, super positive. I think we ignited the spark now in the team. Everybody's excited, and there's so much work ahead that's important. I think my favourite part of the regatta was our toughest part, which was after the first race today. We shook that off really well, and to me, that was the highlight of the event. And like I always stated, we all get along really well, not only the four that are on board, but also all the rest of the sailors. We have a good relationship, and it shows that in the tough moments, you can recover. We were just happy racing together. We're all going to miss racing these boats. They're so much fun. By far is the most fun thing I've ever raced. It was amazing."
For Tudor Team Alinghi, one moment coloured the whole regatta. Skipper Paul Goodison didn't hide his frustration. "I'm sitting here now really frustrated. We were one gybe away from a good result. Like you saw, we were second round the top in that last race; and we did a bad gybe and flopped into touchdown and then kind of got sucked back into the back and that cost a lot. Without that gybe, I think we'd be sat here quite cheery and happy, but now obviously I'm pretty hacked off. I wanted to do better than we have done. But looking on the other side, it was actually a lot of positives this week. I think we raced quite well in the upper range yesterday, which was a really good step forward from where we've been. But from here we've got to learn from the mistakes. We don't have many opportunities to go racing and to clean up some of the mistakes we've made. There was quite a few errors this week, simple own goals that we need to clean up, but being realistic, we haven't sailed together very much, so with that in mind, we've got to move forward and understand that every second we have on the water, is super important."
It was a tough week for GB1 and GB2, who leave Naples firmly focused on what's next. Dylan Fletcher, skipper of GB1, was pragmatic about the results. "I think that the focus of the campaign has been on the big boat, and so between the last event and this event, we've been sailing the boat in a different format when we were sailing it, and so yeah, we didn't switch back into the one design mode until just basically when we arrived here. We knew we were on a back foot, but the goal is to win the America's Cup next year. There's a big push at the moment to get our AC75 out on the water and ultimately, that's what we need the time in. I think this event showed that... so our focus is on getting the big boat on the water and getting the days under our belt."
