Burling and Outteridge star as Emirates Team New Zealand dominate day two in Sardinia

After an electric opening day at the Louis Vuitton 38th America's Cup Preliminary Regatta in Sardinia, day two arrived carrying all the promise of another unforgettable afternoon on the water. A building southerly breeze was forecast in the 11 to 16 knot range, arriving once again from the south-south-east.

Day one had tested every team on the course. As the afternoon wore on, conditions grew progressively more difficult, with the downwind legs throwing up dramatic incidents including loose gybes off the boundaries and repeated nose-diving moments. The AC40 is capable of exceeding 40 knots, and the world's best sailors were extracting every last fraction of performance from these boats in pursuit of any advantage in what has become a fiercely competitive event.

A similar sea state was anticipated for day two. Wave heights in the earlier races were expected to average around 0.3 metres, but Race Director Iain Murray indicated at the morning briefing that by late afternoon those figures could climb to approximately 0.7 metres. With a short four-second period, manoeuvres, particularly downwind, would again be extremely demanding for any crew caught out of position.

Six races were on the schedule, and another day as spectacular as the first was entirely plausible. By the close of play, the picture of who was genuinely capable of winning the overall title should be considerably clearer. Day one had ended with four teams locked together on 20 points and one clear standout at the top. The Luna Rossa Women & Youth Team had established themselves as the team to beat, and with the regatta being sailed on home waters, all of Italy was watching their every move with enormous anticipation.

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Start times had been nudged forward slightly, with the first race scheduled to get underway at 3.10pm CEST, followed by further starts at 3.46pm and 4.27pm CEST.

Teams retained the option to play a single five-minute delay card. Chief Umpire Richard Slater confirmed that GB1, Athena Pathway and Luna Rossa 2 had each used theirs on day one owing to technical reasons. Those three teams would enter the remainder of the weekend without that option, while the rest of the fleet still held it in reserve.

Race reporting continued live through the afternoon.

RACE 4 - 3.10pm Race Start

The first race of day two turned out to be one of the most gripping contests the AC40 format has produced, as Emirates Team New Zealand and Luna Rossa 2 effectively locked themselves into a private match race across all six legs of the course.

The pre-start delivered its own drama when Luna Rossa Women & Youth came off the foils and reported software problems onboard, leaving them to start around 700 metres behind the rest of the fleet and out of contention almost immediately. ETNZ Women & Youth, led by Erica Dawson and Jake Pye, made the most of the situation and worked their way through the pack. The contest everyone was watching, though, was unfolding at the front of the fleet.

Peter Burling and Ruggero Tita secured a clean getaway and took command on the right side of the course, rounding the first mark at the head of the fleet and pulling the chasing pack with them off the starboard windward gate. Nathan Outteridge and Seb Menzies, searching for clear air, elected to split and take the starboard gate independently, gradually recovering ground until, by the first leeward gate, the Italian margin had been trimmed considerably.

The second beat proved decisive for the New Zealanders. Outteridge and Menzies drove left, picked up a favourable shift on the return, and at the cross ducked under Luna Rossa's stern before heading right to establish a starboard advantage. Coming into the second top mark on starboard, ETNZ tacked directly on Luna Rossa's bow and forced the Italians away. From that moment, although the gap remained tight, Emirates Team New Zealand were never seriously threatened again.

A two-board gybe on the left boundary was far from their cleanest work, yet both boats flew down the 1.2 nautical mile course essentially side by side. A symo gybe at the leeward gate followed by a gybe back from Luna Rossa could arguably be identified as the moment the Italians let the race slip. The final beat was close, ETNZ edging around the top mark just ahead, before split tactics down the final run produced a tense conclusion. A close port-starboard situation forced Luna Rossa to cross the Kiwis' transom before swinging back onto the finish layline on starboard gybe. ETNZ read it perfectly, kept the power on, crossed on port and then executed a crash gybe across the line without fault. A big win for Emirates Team New Zealand.

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Race 5

A falling sea breeze turned Race 5 into a complex and absorbing test of boat-handling, with the deteriorating conditions placing exceptional demands on crews running the J3, the smallest jib configuration in the fleet. Off the line it was Athena Pathway, with Hannah Mills and Ellie Aldridge, who found a clean exit on starboard alongside Luna Rossa 1 of Marco Gradoni and Margherita Porro. The fleet fractured straight away, with La Roche-Posay Racing Team heading out to the right on port tack. When the two groups converged, the French team had read the shift well and rounded the left gate clear at the head of the fleet. Luna Rossa 1 took the right gate and found better pressure down the left side of the first run, emerging well ahead and looking dominant as the race moved into softer air.

That dominance proved fragile. On the gybe into the final layline, both La Roche-Posay Racing Team and Luna Rossa 1 dropped off the foils, opening the door for ETNZ 1 to take the right gate while Athena Pathway maintained clean air through the left gate and kept a clear sightline down the course. Heading back upwind, Mills and Aldridge connected with a breeze coming off the right and quickly opened a 100-metre lead. Meanwhile, the fast-charging Luna Rossa 2 attracted a penalty involving Tudor Team Alinghi, who were still to round the second gate. By the second windward mark, Athena Pathway's advantage had grown to 200 metres, prompting the Race Committee to begin shortening the legs to 1.1 nautical miles. Burling and Tita rounded in second simultaneously with Gradoni and Porro, while Outteridge and Menzies held fourth.

Out front, Mills and Aldridge had the luxury of sailing their own race and chasing the shifts, though they still needed to keep a watchful eye on La Roche-Posay Racing Team, who pushed out to the left on the final beat. Coming into the right gate with both pace and composure, Athena Pathway rounded cleanly while the French laboured on the layline and nearly lost the foils.

Athena Pathway streaked clear to win by a commanding 37 seconds. Behind them, the fight for second was fierce among the Italian Women & Youth, La Roche-Posay Racing Team and ETNZ 1 all the way to the finish. Gradoni and Porro executed a final gybe and two-board-down manoeuvre that drew a 20-second penalty on the French right on the finish line, with ETNZ taking third as the primary beneficiaries and keeping their championship ambitions firmly alive. Tudor Team Alinghi capsized following a miscommunicated foil raise on a gybe, and GB1 was recorded as a Did Not Start due to technical issues.

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Race 6

As the regatta moved into its closing races, the tension at the start line in Race 6 was plain to see. Luna Rossa Women & Youth got away well from mid-line alongside Athena Pathway, but Emirates Team New Zealand burst off the starboard end of the line on a sharp angle in clean air and carved out an early, if slender, advantage. Reading the wind correctly proved everything in the big-fleet conditions. Gradoni and Porro looked threatening through the opening exchanges, but ETNZ 1 took control across the final quarter of the first beat to round just ahead of the chasing pack and then extend to a 50-metre lead by the first leeward gate on the way down the run.

With the wind favouring the right, the leaders moved that way, but Luna Rossa 1 set up a starboard tack drag race from slightly to windward and gradually worked into the lead. When ETNZ overshot the layline, Luna Rossa 1 tacked underneath, forcing a split at the second windward gate. The Kiwis tacked around the left-hand gate while Luna Rossa bore away on the right, the two boats heading their separate ways down the second run.

When the leaders came back together, it was Luna Rossa 1 who had nailed their gybe out left, looking downwind, and held the starboard advantage. Rather than covering, Luna Rossa 1 allowed ETNZ to push out to the left, and the Italians promptly sailed into a wind hole. Outteridge and Menzies capitalised immediately, gybing back to open a 200-metre lead that looked to have the race well in hand.

Luna Rossa 1 refused to concede. Up the final windward leg, Gradoni and Porro steadily chipped away at the deficit and arrived at the final gate to make a significant strategic call, bearing away in the opposite direction to ETNZ, who had elected the right-hand gate. The Italians had spotted wind on the right side of the course downwind, bore away off the left marker and connected with it straight away. Their boatspeed climbed sharply, and a poor gybe by the Kiwis on the left boundary, one that saw them head up high just to stay on the foils, gave Gradoni and Porro exactly the opening they needed. The lead change was immediate and emphatic, the two boats swapping boundaries with a 120-metre gap already established ahead of the final gybe to the finish. Both nailed that final manoeuvre, Luna Rossa 1 bore away hard on starboard gybe and crossed the line to win by 11 seconds, leaving them as the clear leaders of the Louis Vuitton 38th America's Cup Preliminary Regatta in Sardinia.

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