BERMUDA — Britain's Land Rover BAR retired from their first America's Cup semi-final race against Emirates Team New Zealand on Monday after suffering a breakage in their towering "wing" sail.
Skipper Ben Ainslie had to throw in the towel after coming to an abrupt halt in the second leg of the widely-anticipated race against the New Zealand crew, which was postponed due to a lack of wind in Bermuda's Great Sound on Sunday.
"A bit of a shame for those guys... it was shaping up to be a good race," New Zealand helmsman Peter Burling said in televised comments on BT Sport after the British crew retired.
The other semifinal series will be contested between Sweden's Artemis Racing and SoftBank Team Japan who are also scheduled to complete two races on Monday.
The first team to win five races in each semi-final will go through to the challenger final.
Ainslie admitted his team were finding it hard to compete in light winds as a lack of breeze meant his first America's Cup semifinal against Emirates Team New Zealand was postponed
"To be really honest we are not too unhappy about the situation right now ... in the very light airs we do struggle," Ainslie told BT Sport from Bermuda on Sunday. After a two-hour wait on the island's Great Sound, the organizers of the event said they were postponing the four semi-final races scheduled for Sunday by 24 hours.
For racing to go ahead, America's Cup rules require a minimum average wind of 6 knots (11 kilometers per hour). Below this level is not enough for the high-tech 50-foot catamarans to lift out of the water and "fly" on their space-age foils.
The crews in the first scheduled semi-final, Emirates Team New Zealand and Britain's Land Rover BAR, had sat on board their catamarans waiting to see if the wind would build, trying to stay out of the beating sun.
British challenger Ainslie had looked relaxed, with the postponement clearly suiting him and his crew. "We know that and our competitors know that so we want to get through today and look forward to better weather forecast for tomorrow and the rest of next week," he said.
Earlier Ainslie, whose crew did just enough to get through the qualifying round but lacking consistency in both speed and the execution of maneuvers, had said the pressure was on New Zealand as the "in-form" team.
As the highest scoring challenger during the qualifier round which ended on Saturday, Emirates Team New Zealand chose Ainslie's team as their semifinal opponents, leaving Sweden's Artemis Racing and SoftBank Team Japan to compete in the other.
The team which notches up five wins first progresses to the final to decide who will go on to challenge Oracle Team USA. New Zealand's Peter Burling, at 26 the youngest helmsman in the competition, said they had chosen Land Rover BAR because they thought the conditions would be in their favor.
While that decision initially looked to have paid off with Sunday's light winds, the postponement to Monday and the forecast of a stiffer breeze will increase Ainslie's chances of beating Burling, based on the British team's performance so far.
On Saturday, Oracle Team USA won the Louis Vuitton America's Cup qualifier event in Bermuda, beating Emirates Team New Zealand and giving the US holders a bonus point for the final. – Reuters
