Update – Finally! Wind in Valencia
Two races on both race courses today. 7-10 knots from 100 degrees.
The big story of the day was Mascalzone Latino beating Team New Zealand in the first match of the day. It was a great race by the Italians who won the start, took the favored right side and led around every mark to win by 15 seconds. The beautiful thing about this win is that it wasn’t a fluke. No lucky shifts just a solid game plan and good execution. Mascalzone’s weather team picked the correct side, the helmsman got the side they wanted, the right side, the boat is fast and the crew executed perfectly. That is solid and they can count on that for the next few months.
In the second flight Mascalzone beat Areva of France to finish the day on two wins along with Luna Rosa and BMW Oracle. BMW Oracle has two rather easy races beating the Chinese and the Germans while Luna Rossa beat China and the Swedes.
Team New Zealand only raced in the first flight and had a bye in the second. The Spanish did not race in the first flight and won their only race of the day against +39, the third Italian team. Each team has a bye in each round robin as there are 11 teams therefore 5 matches in each flight.
The top of the leader board is Luna Rosa and BMW Oracle each with 7 points, Mascalzone is third with 6, Desafio is forth with 5, and Team New Zealand tied for 5th with Victory Challenge with 4 points.
Of course our job on Italian TV was made easier with the good results of the Italian Teams. The news of Mascalzone’s win of TNZ was huge in Italy. All the TV channels covered the story on their nightly news programs. La7, who I am working for, is the only one who has the rights to show the racing live.
For me, it was a great day. Lot’s of action, plenty of tactical situations to comment on, and I am feeling very comfortable in Italian. So far I have to say I am enjoying this new challenge.
Tomorrow’s forecast is not stellar. In fact, there isn’t much wind on the horizon for the next week. So it looks like we will be in some margin race conditions for a while.
Tomorrow morning there is a meeting of the challengers to decide how to proceed with the missed races and the one day of rest scheduled between Round Robin 1 and 2.
At least we have got this thing started.
