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Yes, the Italians have behaved like litigious ****@s over this whole issue.
They've got plenty of previous for this.
It’s almost like rich businessmen don’t like losing and resort to legal bullying.......
hard to imagine
Start of the finals (Prada Cup) tonight. Any predictions? Experts thinking it's too close to call. If only I was working, actually nah, happy to watch in the morning.
I predict there'll be too little wind to race on Saturday, so no racing until Sunday.
Then hopefully it'll be quite windy, where I think Ineos have the advantage, and take at least one win.
Going to be close. Probably 😉
Hmmm
Well, that's not what we hoped for.
Prada just had that extra bit of speed at every point. No tactics just boat speed (didn’t watch R1)
R1 Ineos fell off the foils in the Prestart and were always behind.
Pantage.
Yesterday:
R1 Ineos fell off the foils in the Prestart and were always behind.
Today, not so much falling *down* off the foils! Amazing how they recovered to still start almost even in R4, but still a pretty comprehensive bating, lost time almost every lap.
They look faster downwind, bur but slower upwind. If they can win the start they may match race their way up the first leg and control it from there, but it looks tough to come crack from here. Fingers crossed it is a bit less one sided next block
Auckland is in covid lockdown, races postponed until further notice.
Wow! Didn’t see that coming!
Yeah, just spotted that. A responsible attitude to take and at least I don't have to be awake at 3 am Wednesday for my regular racing fix now.
interesting, i thought that the foils had to be either up or down, and couldn't have them somewhere in the middle unless transitioning from up or down. They can make "low frequency" adjustments (or the way i see this, maybe change a setting during a race, but not every tack), but not high frequency ones, or effectively trim the boat during flight. So what Prada is doing is wrong??
A genuine question....how is this all financed or monetized?
It all looks frighteningly expensive. Building craft good for one series and the whole general setup. But I'm seeing nothing of it in the mainstream media. I'm a sailor and I admit I'm not naturally drawn to it but surely you need to reach the likes of me as a relatively easy win to break even financially as marketable sport. But if it wasn't for seeing this thread title pop up I wouldn't know it was ongoing. I wouldn't know where to find it on TV and don't see it mentioned on the TV news or papers (electronic versions). It's 6 clicks from the BBC landing page to find an article on it.
Or is it not really monetized - do the team owners and the sponsors just know they are spunking away their money away and are fine with that? Or is it generating banker shots for future Pirelli advertising campaigns or whatever.
It genuinely baffles me.
Well, I think Prada are supplying some of the money. Perhaps.
They seem to think that the exposure & marketing are worthwhile.
Belstaff aren’t targeting me with my their products or advertising so I’ve no idea if their media output is stuffed with boats. But they think it’s worthwhile. Ineos clearing sent a big cheque too.
Not sure what Airbus think they’re getting g out of it, especially on an American boat, but I doubt AM painted it there for free.
You’re right in that they must be burning huge piles of cash, but it must be coming from the sponsors. And they must think it’s worthwhile, or just love having their name out there.
Jim Ratcliffe (Mr Ineos) also owns Belstaff, so I thinks that's just part of his funding deal. Ditto the Grenadier - I'm sure there's some of those stickers on the boat somewhere too!
It's almost entirely rich man's willy waving rather than a strong marketing case. And I think the America's Cup has almost always been like that. You'd need to sell a lot of anything to get back $200m profit.
Airbus involvement is interesting. Maybe part of it is one-upmanship on Boeing, who I think were previous sponsors of the American team. And maybe partly they treat it as R&D spend because they are involved in the aero/hydro-dynamics.
Shame to see GB at less than their best, but LR were impressive. The time gaps weren't big in the 4 races, so could yet be tight.
I have heard it said that the only reason JR got involved was to wind up JLR, the previous sponsor..(All about dropping the Defender)
I don't think the team are badly paid, the guy I know on the boat (Neighbour of a friend) whole family moved out to NZ last year courtesy of the team. What a job, looks fun, but a little high pressure right now.
How much "Profit" does a bike team make though, got to sell a few bits of lycra and £10k road bikes to get that back! And consider that none of us (Probably) are likely to be direct Ineos (Chemicals) customers. Though probably are indirect customers because they are involved in carbon fibre production!
I still choose Mapei every* time** I buy tile adhesive.
Think of the return on that cycle sponsorship a few years ago.
I should add I’ve been enjoying the Mozzy Sail stuff on YT. Worth a look if you have seen it.
*mostly
**this does not happen all that often
It’s almost entirely rich man’s willy waving rather than a strong marketing case.
I think that was what I driving at. I can't imagine the people actually running/working at the teams are making a loss but why those who are financing them (and the event) through sponsorship are bothering.
The troubling conclusion I'm coming to is the reason BA's team is not just called Ainslie Racing any more (with some jingoistic union jack daubing if it makes you happy) with Ratcliffe as a behind the scenes sugar daddy spaffing some of his vast fortune on a hobby is because if you can put the veneer of Ineos 'marketing' (a brand that does not really need marketing of this sort) on it you can write the vast majority off against tax. Same with his sponsorship of the cycling team too I guess. Doesn't sit easily with me.
Convert, Broadly I agree but he is spending vast amounts of money on UK sport, UK business and UK engineering. That's a good thing.
The world would be a much duller place if we hadn't ever had an Americas Cup, Felix jumping out a balloon in space, Motorsport of any kind, loads of extreme sports stuff and lots of great cycle sports. (To mention just a few). Lots of things just wouldn't happen if it wasn't for very wealthy people or business throwing cash at stuff they like the look of. I suppose you could say the same was true at the Colusseum though!
Ooh, can we talk about football sponsorship too?
I see very little positive coming from Football.
Football sponsorship's different though; lots of companies with target markets that overlap directly with football as a live & TV "product". They're directly addressing their demographic, pretty much all year round and on their screens all day every bloody day
It’s exactly the same. The sponsors feel they get value. Wether it is bragging rights, raising brand awareness or just blagging free tickets and stuff 8p1 don’t know but it is their call. There will be a reason that makes sense to them,
Well, yeah, they all must have a reason. What I'm suggesting is that in upper league footy it's a fairly obvious direct commercial one a lot of the time - if I don't advertise my online betting on somebody's shirt, all the punters will go to my competition who do exactly that. Exceptions for super-wealthy oligarchs (or oil states) where, yes, it's vanity (and a little bit of sportwashing)
And also your online betting logo on that shirt will be seen my millions and millions weekly across the globe for a season that is months and months long.
Most of the videos on the America's Cup official channel are getting the number of views that would embarrass your average 'pro' teenage gamer making videos in his bedroom.
Looking forward to tomorrow with all fingers crossed , surely not a rout. Save us Ben , you must be mad by now...
LOL @ video
Great video 😁
The troubling conclusion I’m coming to is the reason BA’s team is not just called Ainslie Racing any more (with some jingoistic union jack daubing if it makes you happy) with Ratcliffe as a behind the scenes sugar daddy spaffing some of his vast fortune on a hobby is because if you can put the veneer of Ineos ‘marketing’ (a brand that does not really need marketing of this sort) on it you can write the vast majority off against tax. Same with his sponsorship of the cycling team too I guess. Doesn’t sit easily with me.
Making less money means you pay less tax, but Ineos makes £2billion profit a year, AC campaigns are in the order of £50-£250million. It's somewhere between a drop in the ocean and 10% for him. I spend more than 10% of my disposable income on bikes 🤣. And it's not really saving you money spending 100% of it on sponsorship Vs 20% on cooperation tax. And of that 100% there was something like 150,000 man hours put into the prototype boat alone, that's a lot of people's wages paid.
Some discussion arround the economics here:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/cfc0d884-f004-11e9-a55a-30afa498db1b
And it gets even more expensive if you win - you've got to do it all again!
Whitewash averted.
LR are so strong, Ineos have to bring their best to beat them, and happy to see them do that today. Second race was good stuff.
Quick question for the uninitiated. How the **** do sailing boats manage to sail faster than the prevailing wind speed
The sails provide lift. It's like asking how they can sail upwind. It isn't the wind blowing them along it is the shape of the sail generating force (like the wing of an aeroplane, only horizontally, not vertically)
Others will I am sure answer with more detail but there are 3 factors.
1. A vessel only really cares about the wind it experiences. The apparent wind. As it speeds up both the velocity and the direction of that apparent wind changes. You can design a craft to take advantage of that.
2. Drag - reduce the drag through the water (and the air) and the vessel can accelerate much more swiftly and get beyond the speed of the prevailing wind. If you are a displacement vessel pushing huge volumes of heavy water out of the way you just can't produce enough energy to move fast enough. Vessels that either plane or foil can do this much more easily as their drag once up on the plane or foiling is a fraction of a displacement vessel.
3. Angle of attack - Viking Galleons mostly needed the wind from the side or behind to go forwards. Modern aerofoil shaped sails generate lift like an aircraft wing and can stay very effective when the wind is coming from in front. Not totally on the nose, but close to it. As a vessel goes significantly faster than the prevailing wind the vector or direction of the wind is more and more from in front of the vessel. Moderns sails or foils on boats and windsurfers have got increasingly good and using this wind direction to generate forward motion whilst minimising drag. Partly by changing the angle of the sail relative to the boat as the speed increases and the angle of the apparent wind changes and sometimes by changing the 'chord' or shape of the sail as the speed increases and the direction changes which reduces bottom end grunt needed to get it goes but improves the angle to wind it can operate at whilst reducing the drag.
Well, something like that.
Grrr, forum seems to have eaten my post.
Another good example is wind turbines.
At the centre the blade is almost inline with the wind with a deep chord to produce maximum lift at low rotation (c.f. boat) speeds.
At the tip the blade is almost flat (low chord) and almost perpendicular to the wind because it's moving at 120mph (or even more on big offshore turbines). This produces lift and minimises drag based on the apparent won't as the tip sees it. Although you reach a point of diminishing returns as you can only make the sail so efficient , and the lower the engine the further away from forwards the lift is pointing (lift being always perpendicular to the aerofoil, drag being the same direction as the airflow). In boat terms this is why even going downwind they have the sails sheeted in hard (And don't use a spinaker).
Even in a displacement boat you exploit this by pulling the Cunningham on hard upwind which pulls the maximum depth in the sail forward, and flattens the top third to reduce drag when going upwind. Going downwind you release it, the centre of effort moves back and the top of the sail deepens to produce more power as now the drag that results is pointing sideways/forward rather than backwards.
On a plane it's like putting the flaps down and increasing the angle of attack to produce far more lift at low speed Vs normal.
It’s a squeeze between the power being generated by the sail and the opposing force of the foils/keel. Think of a wet block of soap between your fingers and how fast it moves when you squeeze it! Far quicker than your fingers’ closing speed.
Holy ****, that LR boat is a rocketship.
Blimey. Fair play to the Italian team.
Sad to see team GB end not in the final - I had real hopes they would be the final challenger.
Ok, im still calling NZ as winners, but it's going to be close.
We were outgunned in boatspeed and tactics. The Italians thoroughly deserved it.
Feel sorry for Ineos but I’m sure they were giving it their all.
The Italians were always fast, even in the RR losses, but bad comms & lots of mistakes.
Since then they’ve been flawless, and got the light air that suits them.
So 3rd out of a field of 4 that bothered to build a boat. Beating a boat that broke. Not a great result in all honesty.
Given such a small number of teams elected to come to play and the drubbings handed out at every stage I wonder how far back you have to go to find a collection of losing boats that touched the water in anger an infrequently before meeting the great angle grinder in the sky as this time around.
Shame for Ben and the team. Luna Rosa look impressive, and I'm hopeful for some good racing with NZ
I’m hopeful for some good racing with NZ
So am I, but I have a feeling that one boat will just be faster and sail off into the distance. I think that's TNZ's strategy - just spend the Prada Cup time developing the boat to be fast so that they aren't pushed into making mistakes and don't need to win every start.
just spend the Prada Cup time developing the boat to be fast
They didn't need the Prada Cup time - they wrote the rules and then agreed them with LR, both had a head start, made more important by Covid and not having the delay while their boat was shipped across the world.
We were outgunned in boatspeed and tactics.
I think you'll find that boatspeed makes pretty much anyone an amazing tactician!
I've not watched any of the finals (couldn't really see the point) but LR seemed to have great speed and there's very little you can do about that.
So 3rd out of a field of 4 that bothered to build a boat. Beating a boat that broke. Not a great result in all honesty.
Hmmm. That's bollocks.
They did a great job and at least had the balls to put the campaign together and produce a good boat. Hopefully this will form the platform of a future campaign (unless the Italians win and it goes back to leadmines - which is a possibility).
The team that relaly need to be looking at themselves is Team USA - it seems they had some basic stuff wrong that lead to the boat not really being controllable.
How the **** do sailing boats manage to sail faster than the prevailing wind speed
Simple answer:
Wind passing over the sails generates a pressure difference on either side of the sail - the faster the wind passes over the sail the greater the pressure difference. This pressure difference is converted into forward motion.
On a windless day stick your hand out of a car travelling at 30mph - you've got a 30mph wind. The faster the car goes the stronger the [apparent] 'wind'.
If you remove enough drag from a boat it will start generating it's own [apparent] wind and keep going faster.
The limiting factor is mainly drag from the hull/foils and aerodynamics.
I have a feeling that one boat will just be faster and sail off into the distance. I think that’s TNZ’s strategy
This...I think it may be very dull...like the Prada cup was when one boat was so clearly outclassed
Giles Scott’s interview post race was quite illuminating. He basically said this wasn’t a surprise to us.
It’s become like F1 as opposed to NASCAR. Richest team wins. Standard boats would make for great racing.
It’s become like F1 as opposed to NASCAR. Richest team wins.
Ferrari are the richest team in F1. Hasn't helped them. TNZ have never been the richest team in the AC. Doesn't seem to have stopped them winning. Obviously, you need an adequate budget, but once you have that, there are only marginal gains from more money and just adding more people doesn't work if you don't have good managers to keep everyone focused.
TNZ get to write the rules for boats and sailing to suit themselves though. I remember a few years back there was an agreement to stick to one class for successive Cups. NZ when they won declined.
TNZ get to write the rules for boats and sailing to suit themselves though.
To be fair, 4 years ago no one had built a large foiling monohull, it wasn't much more than a simulation, and as the development process proved, they didn't always produce optimum results.
I have a feeling that one boat will just be faster and sail off into the distance. I think that’s TNZ’s strategy
Maybe, but the boats are pretty different from each other, so there could be surprises around which one is faster.
And either LR has gained several knots boat speed or was sandbagging for 2nd place in the opening rounds. So unless ETNZ have done the same then that's an improvement on before christmas.
And I'm not convinced tinkering time in the shed is really worth that much more than 2-boat testing in the real world.
TNZ get to write the rules for boats and sailing to suit themselves though. I remember a few years back there was an agreement to stick to one class for successive Cups. NZ when they won declined.
New Zealand never signed up to the agreement in the first place, so obviously didn't back out after winning.
It was a bit odd, wanting to change the format to every two years, I guess in the hope more countries would participate and the cup would change hands more often.
NZ wanted to keep things the same, whereby the holders and the challenger of record determine the format.
I suspect that if ENZ do win, that the next defence will be somewhere more tv/spectator friendly- the cost/reward ratio doesn't seem to work for NZ gov and public, and Emirates would probably rather be somewhere with a higher profile.
Excellent first day of racing.
Well now that's an interesting first day.
That was enjoyable. Should be a fun series.
all the various FB and analysers comments suggesting that TNZ were 5-10% faster due to various clever stuff maybe were wrong, and actually they are going to be very very close. Will be interesting to see in light and/or stronger winds to see who has the best all round package.
On the last 2 legs ETNZ were eating up the lead very quickly. Another 30 secs would have been interesting......
On the last 2 legs ETNZ were eating up the lead very quickly. Another 30 secs would have been interesting……
I've only skipped through the highlights but there's a big difference between catching up and getting past.
LR would have been quite happy to give up lead to make sure they were in the right place to keep the lead.
So, getting in front at the start and keeping the other boat behind are a winning strategy then!
So, getting in front at the start and keeping the other boat behind are a winning strategy then!
Yep..saves time tho...you only need to watch 2:10 of pre-race and about a minute of the race and then it's all over
the Kiwis are suddenly very quiet on social media.
the Kiwis are suddenly very quiet on social media.
what's your implication?
Kiwis seemed to sharpen up their tacks in that last race. Race 3 they were losing every manoeuvre, but race 4 LR struggled to keep it up exiting tacks.
what’s your implication?
they were very noisy before the match started. predictions of 7-0 etc. basically saying its not worth starting the AM as TNZ are so fast and so much better design known one else got a chance. So much so that in the last few months it really put me off NZ people. (yeh i know the internet it full of trolls an all that, but it was really in your face sort of stuff. Every article about any another boat, the NZ folk would jump in a blurt rubbish all over it.)
Nice to see two good days of racing. I think that both boats have different strengths, and winning the start allows the leader to lever an advantage in a certain area. LR were sailing nice and high to the wind after winning the first start, and NZ suffered. And in the second race NZ could chose the angle after winning the start and make their boat speed count.
Turning without foil down was pretty big mistake from LR, but love the way the boat looks and it's them I'll be cheering for.
I love it! Kids off to school at 8, sat with a coffee before work.
Yep cheering on LR as it looks super cool and the skipper for NZ is so bloody dour on interviews.
It'd be nice if there was a bit more dueling after the start, but some of the camera angles when they're ripping through turns are amazing still.
what’s your implication?
they were very noisy before the match started.
oh right...yeah makes sense. I thought you meant just after today's racing.
Yep cheering on LR as it looks super cool and the skipper for NZ is so bloody dour on interviews.
I'm cheering on NZ because (I think) that if LR win, they've said they'll go back to boring displacement boats. (Also, I don't like Jimmy Spithill, for no reason whatsoever :-))
As boatspeed goes up the tactical side of the racing becomes different. You can’t tack on every tiny shift without losing speed so keeping in the windy side of the course is critical unles a major shift comes through. You want to cover the other boat you have to sail your own race when you are clear in the lead and look at the bigger course picture.
You want a lot of duelling check out Lasers or Toppers on a gusty shifty day.
And again I enjoyed today. Looking forward to watching this series develop.
Definitely seeing a pattern here.
So interesting that for a couple of years all the focus has been on the technology, the boat control etc.
It's actually coming back to the basics of good starts, tactics, giving opposition bad air etc.
There is an element of boat speed, but so much is 'normal' sailing racing.
Enjoyable.
I really want to see them racing at the top end of the legal wind range