Intense fighting

PTPortugal Match Cup reaches semi-final stage

The semifinal round of the PTPortugal Match Cup, Stage 1 of the 2005-’06 Swedish Match Tour, was suspended this evening after two intense flights.

Ben Ainslie of Emirates Team New Zealand, took a 2-0 lead in his match against Dane Jes Gram-Hansen of Gram-Hansen Racing, while Alinghi's Peter Holmberg and Peter Gilmour of Pizza-La Sailing Team, are tied 1-1.

Holmberg protested the race committee after his first match with Gilmour because he believed that Gilmour was scored a finisher when he didn’t start properly. Late in the sequence Gilmour tacked to port close to Holmberg, who was on starboard. Holmberg had to tack to port and bear away to keep clear. The umpires gave Gilmour a red flag penalty, meaning he had to do his 270-degree penalty turn immediately.

Gilmour then tacked back to starboard but was an early starter and had to restart. He bore away on starboard and gybed to port to clear the line, which he felt cleared the penalty. Holmberg, after bearing away on port to get room to tack back to starboard, hit the stern of the committee boat while tacking. He was penalised for hitting the committee boat. Gilmour got a second penalty because the umpires felt he shouldn’t have gotten an advantage out of the incident. He did a second turn at the finish and won the race, but Holmberg felt that the turn at the start wasn’t proper because he hadn’t officially started the race after being over early.

Holmberg protested the committee over Gilmour’s finish, but it appears that the umpires may have added to the confusion by not properly signaling the penalties. The International Jury heard the testimony but hadn’t issued a decision at press time.

The second start between the two was as exciting as the first. Gilmour had Holmberg tucked outside the committee boat end, but didn’t close him out. He peeled away to start one second too early, which gave Holmberg the slimmest margin to squeeze through and win the start, leaving Gilmour gasping for wind on the start line. “I think there was one inch on either side,” said Holmberg. “The starts with Gilmour are always exciting.”

Ainslie showed great poise in the start box to open his 2-0 lead on Gram-Hansen.

In the first race he won the boat end and got to the right hand side of the race course where he found great puffs to open a big lead at the windward mark. In the second race he was further down the line with Gram-Hansen closer to the boat end, but was able to tack to port and found a lifting puff inside of Gram-Hansen.

“My starting has come on a lot this season,” Ainslie said. “There are still some scenarios I’m trying to figure out, but if you can get off the line even it’s anybody’s race because of the shifts.”

Like yesterday, the wind was very shifty. Blowing from a bit east of north, it was shifting through 25 to 40 degrees, with the strength ranging anywhere from 6 to 20 knots, depending on the puff and the location on the racecourse. “That was some shifty stuff,” said Gilmour. “It was crazy.”

“My team did a good job picking the breeze, Ray especially” Ainslie said of his Emirates Team New Zealand tactician Ray Davies. “We tried to sail as fast as we could. It seemed to work for us.”

Holmberg echoed the speed-first thinking. “Our plan was to not look at him, just look at the mark and sail the shifts, not the competition,” Holmberg said. “It’s open-minded sailing in this condition, not match-racing.”

In racing for fifth through eighth, Staffan Lindberg (FIN), Team Finland, beat Chris Law (GBR), The Outlaws, to capture fifth. Law finished sixth. Bertrand Pacé (FRA), BMW Oracle Racing, finished seventh after beating Michael Dunstan (AUS), who placed eighth.

Swedish Match Tour partners include Swedish Match, BMW and the Match Race Association. Swedish Match Tour Official Sponsors include Musto, Sebago, Travel Places, Trident Studio and Wedgwood.