A delay of almost two hours preceded the British team’s first scheduled match for Wednesday at the Louis Vuitton Trophy regatta in Nice. The first of these matches was against BMW Oracle Racing, the Challenger for the 33rd America’s Cup. Skippered by Gavin Brady today the American team had a two win and one loss record before this race.

TeamOrigin had drawn the port tack entry to the start, which in these light conditions is normally a fairly disadvantageous end to manage best. The pre-start saw a two minute dial -up before some interesting manoeuvres deep in the start box. Coming close to the start Ben Ainslie managed to keep the pressure on the American team forcing them to take the right hand side. Brady started at speed on port tack near the committee boat, TeamOrigin happy to have won the left had lost some time in the process during the last tack onto starboard just before the gun.

‘It is quite often a difficult decision to make whether you want to lose a lot to get the side you want or whether you accept a close start on the un-favoured side. Today was like that. We had to make sure we didn’t lose too much in winning the left, we were a bit late and slow off the line but it turned out to be the right decision,’ commented TeamOrigin skipper, Ben Ainslie.

It became clear within a couple of minutes that the wind was significantly better on the left. Rob Greenhalgh the TeamOrigin strategist, the wind eyes of the team who spends his time near the top of the mast, made the following analysis of the key moment of the race from his point of view:

‘The wind was really unstable during the half hour or so period before the start and we weren’t really sure which side was going to be favoured. We decided quite close to the pre-start that the left looked marginally better and as the pre-start developed we felt stronger about it. Ben managed to get the left for us and sure enough it was better but we certainly didn’t expect it to be quite so powerful. The rest of the race saw us always in better wind.’

TeamOrigin crossed the finish with a lead of two minutes and one second to maintain with Emirates Team New Zealand an unbeaten record to date. The last flight of the day was abandoned due to lack of stable wind and will be sailed tomorrow, Thursday, along with the final two flights of Round Robin One and the two partially sailed flights from earlier in the week.

Louis Vuitton Trophy Nice Cote d’Azur, Round Robin One – Current Standings:

Competing teams – Country – Skipper – Record (W-L)
Emirates Team New Zealand (NZL) – Dean Barker, 5-0
TeamOrigin (GBR) – Ben Ainslie, 4-0
Azzurra (ITA) – Francesco Bruni, 4-1
BMW Oracle Racing (USA) – Gavin Brady, 2-2
Artemis (SWE) – Paul Cayard, 2-3
All4One (FRA/GER) – Jochen Schuemann, 2-4
Synergy Russian Sailing Team (RUS) – Karol Jablonski, 1-4
Team French Spirit (FRA) – Bertrand Pacé, 0-6

Schedule for Thursday 12 November:

Flight 12
Match 1 BMW Oracle Racing (75) vs Emirates Team New Zealand (93)
Match 2 TeamOrigin (99) vs Artemis (90)

Flight 13
Match 1 TFS – Pages Jaunes (75) vs Synergy (93)
Match 2 All4One (99) vs Azzurra (90)

Flight 14
Match 1 BMW Oracle Racing (75) vs Artemis (93)
Match 2 TeamOrigin (99) vs Emirates Team New Zealand (90)

For more information on the British team, visit www.teamorigin.com