4-0

Louis Vuitton Cup quarterfinal repechage winners go through

Luna Rossa (ITA-74) beat Victory Challenge (Orm)
Delta 01:37
Luna Rossa wins best of seven Repechage 4–0.

The valiant Victory Challenge finally came to an end at the hands of an ever-improving Prada team, led by Francesco de Angelis.

Despite a change of helm with Magnus Holmberg stepping up to steer in place of Jesper Bank, Swedish fortunes did not change as Rod Davis did a great job as starting helm on Prada to win the start at the pin end.

After a ‘dial up’ in the pre-start, Prada was able gain the initiative by accelerating away faster, whilst Orm was left wallowing in the water after the boat stalled, as it tried to pick up speed on port tack. Prada won the favoured left side and crossed the line at speed and swiftly tacked onto port to cover the Swedish boat.

Initial gains on the right helped Orm to a slight lead but Prada kept its faith in the left and gained from a shift as it approached the port lay line and rounded the windward mark 15 seconds ahead.

Holmberg guided Orm straight into a gybe set and Prada gybed to cover immediately. Thereafter Prada’s superior downwind speed prevailed and the Italian boat was able to slowly extend to get to round the leeward mark 26 seconds ahead.

Disaster struck the Victory Challenge on the final beat when the genoa halyard shackle broke. The foredeck team on Orm were very quick to tackle the problem, but the breakage acted as the final ‘nail in the coffin’ as boat speed dropped by two knots until a repair was effected, leaving Prada to inexorably extend its lead and sail into the Semi Finals.