Race ready and still on top of the standings
Podium finish at San Diego
Coach Rod Davis blogs on Saturday’s race
One of the hardest things to do in yacht racing is to turn a bad day around.
Lose the first two races of the day in a match-racing regatta and you are very much at risk of falling into a flaming tail spin. So re-grouping is easier said than done. It is rarely one thing, but lots of little things that will turn it around.
Today, we did manage to come out race ready. The boys sailed really well. There was more intensity, they were much more in tune with wind and we got a great start from Dean Barker.
That translated into a 39sec win over Artemis and a third place overall in the San Diego match racing championships. Third place was enough for us to retain our first place at the top of the ACWS match racing standing after three regattas.
Jimmy Spithill racing Oracle 4 – the match racing winner at San Diego – is second on the overall standings with 26 points. Artemis is third on 23 and Team Korea fourth on 20.
If Grant Dalton reminded me once, he reminded me a dozen times: “This the first time we have NOT been in the finals of a regatta.”
It was his way of drilling into me that we were under-performing. Of course you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to know we had an off-day yesterday. But in a strange way, Dalton made me smile. Imagine that. Emirates Team New Zealand has been in every final they have entered for the last six years. That is a record that will stand for a while. I just wonder how it has taken so long for us to miss out.
Tomorrow is the winner-takes-all fleet race. We will be ready.
COACH
