Torben Grael and the uncertain future of Luna Rossa

Antonio Marrai on the future of Luna Rossa, while Torben Grael discusses AC, TP52s and his Star sailing

Luna Rossa’s participation in the 34th America’s Cup appears to be up in the air again, amid rumours that Team Principal, Prada’s Patricio Bertelli has pulled the plug on the campaign.

According to Luna Rossa Team Manager Antonio Marrai, the rumours may be true, but in reality no official decision has been made about their America’s Cup campaign, due to there still being no concrete information about the event itself. “I think everyone has to know the venue,” Marrai told thedailysail. “The main problem for the America’s Cup, if you have your sponsors or if you are looking for sponsors, is to know the rules – the when and where. Otherwise you won’t get a sponsor.”

What had been decided is that at present Luna Rossa won’t be participating at any more Louis Vuitton Trophy regattas. The team competed in La Maddalena, but Marrai says they weren’t impressed that the two boats broken during a collision weren’t fixed during the event. But the issue again is uncertainty over whether or not the Louis Vuitton Trophy events are anything to do with the 34th America’s Cup. As he puts it: “if it is just a show we are not interested.”

Luna Rossa tactician Torben Grael says that the WSTA were a little lucky in La Maddalena. “The boats were broken and the weather wasn’t 100%...although it is a windy place, we might have lost a few races for wind, but we lost a lot of days through light air, which is not very usual and then we lost the two boats which delayed the whole thing.”

Grael agrees when we put it to him that the Version 5 can’t take the kind of hard use and abuse that they see in the Louis Vuitton Trophy events. “Especially because they weren’t 100% already for those conditions," he says. "I think if you prepare the boats well and have specialist sails it would have gone a lot better. Most of the damage was in sails rather than boats.”

This season Luna Rossa has dispensed with their STP65 campaign and have moved into the TP52 class having acquired Vasco Vascotto’s former Mutua Madrilena, a two season old Judel-Vrolijk design that has not been campaigned much but in theory should be just as competitive as her sisterships. Over the winter Luna Rossa made some modifications to ensure the boat complied with the latest TP52 class rules for this season’s Audi MedCup. According to Marrai they succeeded in improving the performance upwind in a, breeze but he admits that the modifications have made the boat slow in light conditions and slow to gain speed after tacks or gybes.

With Robert Scheidt not at the helm for the Audi MedCup event in Marseille, there were rumours of a split and Marrai confirms that neither Scheidt, nor Torben Grael will be on the boat for the imminent Audi MedCup event in Barcelona due to other commitments, but is adamant the highly capped Brazilian Olympic stars will be returning for the Audi MedCup for the regattas after Barcelona. So no split.

While Scheidt, now living in Italy, is continuing with his Star training, Grael over the time of the Barcelona Audi MedCup regatta will be competing at Rolex Ilhabela Sailing Week in Brazil. At this regatta Grael will be tactician on a Soto 40 one design. Designed by Javier Soto Acebal, the S40 is an increasingly popular one design day sailer in South America and ten are expected to be competing at Ilhabela with participants coming from Chile, Argentina, Urugary and of course Brazil. He will be tactician on a boat steered by his 21 year old son, who, yes, is Olympic sailing and has his own 49er campaign.

The topic of the speed of the Luna Rossa TP52 isn’t a happy one for Grael. “Not very fun - a slow boat is not fun,” the five time Olympic medallist grumbles. “We are not going fast – if it is the boat or us, I don’t know. It is not a lot of fun. The boat is okay downwind but it has some problems upwind which we haven’t figured out yet.”

Grael indicated that one of the reasons for Patrizio Bertelli’s hesitancy over the future of Luna Rossa’s Cup campaign is the possibility of the next event being held in multihulls. While Bertelli, something of a traditionalist when it comes to the America’s Cup, would personally prefect the event to be in monohull, Grael himself quite likes the idea. The boats are exciting, even if in his opinion the racing in the 33rd America’s Cup wasn’t. “With only two boats and with multihulls there was such a difference in speed. It was a little boring to see.”

Even if Luna Rossa’s Cup plans are up in the air at present, Grael says that he has no plans on competing in the next Volvo Ocean Race, which he of course won last time as skipper of Ericsson 4. “It would be nice to do it again, but with a good campaign, with time to prepare, and with a structure and everything – an Ericsson-style campaign. It is not the kind of race you can do just for the sake of doing it or for money.”

At present it seems that Richard Brisius and Johan Salen, the key figures within Atlant are working on other projects – Brisius continuing with Ericsson while Salen is taking time off cruising the Pacific with his family.

Both Scheidt and Grael are continuing with their Star campaigns and ominously Grael and Scheidt, two of the world’s most eminent Olympic sailors, have been training together. “We did a lot of sailing at the end of last year and we’ve done a couple of regattas and then four months without doing anything and now we are back into it. There is not a lot of time to dedicate to it, but it is a very fun program. Robert is living in Italy now, so he will probably be doing more sailing with my brother.”

For Grael, his next regatta in the Star will be Sail for Gold in Weymouth next month.

Obviously the 2016 Olympics going to Brazil with the sailing being held in Rio relatively close to the main events, is exciting for Grael, but by the time of the 2016 Games he will be 56, and it is likely he will have hung up his Olympic sailing boots by then. There is also the possibility that there will be new Olympic classes and there might not be a Star or an equivalent.

“We need stability for sailing to grow and if you make changes you make them for the second next Olympics not the next one, otherwise it just favours the rich countries and it gets harder and harder for countries that don’t have a lot of money,” says Grael on a topic that he is clearly passionate. "The Europe dinghy, all the Ynglings – they are all garbage now. And they also kill the class. The Europe dinghy was a pretty nice class before it became Olympic and then it was dumped from the Olympics and the class is dead. They have to be more careful with that. It became very political the decision about the classes. It should be more technical than political. If you just go for votes you are only going to have very simple boats and that is not what the Olympics should be.

“To get rid of the multihull didn’t make ANY sense to me. At the other end we have two trapeze dinghies that are basically the same –the 470 and the 49er, one is more modern than the other, but they are the same kind of boat and the same thing with the Laser and Finn. You are not doing good for sailing keeping the same kind of boats in and dumping other boats that are a big chunk of sailing that are multihulls.”

Grael says he hasn’t had a go on a foiling Moth yet but members of his family have and he saw a lot of them while they were sailing at stopovers during the last Volvo Ocean Race. “They all thought they were great fun and that is what we need for the future to get kids interested – something more exciting and fast. It is good.”

So with Luna Rossa it is a case of 'watch this space' while expect to see some serious gravitas in the Star class come Sail for Gold in Weymouth next month.