It’s not often that we re-publish standard team press releases, but this one just in from Prada goes to highlight several points, the first being how a break between rounds doesn’t mean a holiday for the team.

On top of this, the fact that one of the most experienced teams in the event finds itself in such a position, proves once more what level the game is played at down here and how quickly even the best prepared teams can find themselves rushing to catch up.

The release refers to the teams decision to fit a third bow to their first boat ITA-74.

The press release as issued the evening before the first race of the repechage:

Matteo Plazzi, navigator on Luna Rossa, said today:

“It’s been an important day for us as we have been able to complete all the modifications we had planned on Luna Rossa ITA 74. We had a very long night yesterday: we stepped the mast around 2 am, put the boat in the water at 4 am and at 5 am began measurement. Around 7 am we were able to carry out the first structural tests and at 8.30 we left the dock.

Today’s outing was used primarily to check that everything was functioning correctly. Unfortunately the wind was very shifty and we were unable to assess the speed of the boat. However, the few hours that we spent on the water were precious because they enabled us to gain, once more, confidence in our boat and tomorrow we will be able to focus only on racing.

In the ideal world we would have obviously liked to have 3 or 4 days to train with ITA 74 before the repechage round, but this was not feasible as we didn’t have enough time. We trained with ITA 80 and were able to test some solutions that we might decide to use on ITA 74.

It’s been a tough week and the team worked really hard around the clock in order to reach an ambitious goal.

Victory Challenge is a strong opponent with a good crew and a good boat. They are at their first America’s Cup experience but have spent a long time here in Auckland training before the start of the Louis Vuitton Cup.

They achieved some good results in the races and during the past month they have certainly improved. We will have some tough matches and are confident in the modifications that we decided to carry out on ITA 74.”