Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Louis Vuitton Act 12 - Day 6: Emirates first and unbeaten, Luna Rossa scores great victory over BMW Oracle

Just as meteorologists had predicted, it turned out to be a very light day, resulting in a delay of more than 2 hours as the race committee waited for the sea breeze to pick and establish itself. After racing started, for a moment everybody believed that we would follow the form book with predictable results. This is what happened except for the Luna Rossa race against BMW Oracle. Obviously, that race could have gone both ways but the real surprise was not its outcome but rather the way it unraveled. A couple of minutes before the end, everybody at the media boat was astonished to see BMW Oracle lose their lead and Luna Rossa just zoom away and cross first.

As one can see from the pictures of the final stretch of the race, it was all due to an excellent tactic call aboard Luna Rossa´s ITA-86 by Charlie McKee. With such close performance levels in the 32nd America's Cup, especially among the Big Four, trivialities such as "it ain't over till is´s over" hold true.

The results at the rest of the races were the expected ones. What is even more intriguing though in the Luna Rossa victory over BMW Oracle, is the fact that 15 minutes before, Shosholoza had lost to Emirates Team New Zealand in exactly the same way. Not that the South Africans had any chance to win, despite their strong fight, but their decision to stick to the right side of the course, the way BMW Oracle did, resulted in a larger gap!!


Louis Vuitton Act 12
Provisional Ranking at end of Day 6
Division TeamPoints
FirstEmirates Team New Zealand9
Alinghi8
Luna Rossa8
BMW Oracle7
SecondVictory Challenge5
Desafío Español5
Mascalzone Latino - Capitalia Team5
Team Shosholoza3
Third+39 Challenge2
Areva Challenge1
United Internet Team Germany0
China Team0

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