Peter Burling has beaten Emirates Team New Zealand for the second time in four months. The former Team New Zealand skipper steered Italy’s Luna Rossa to victory in the match race final of the America’s Cup preliminary regatta on the Bay of Naples on Sunday 27 September, Italian time, winning by about 17 seconds.
It repeats the result from the first preliminary regatta in Cagliari, Sardinia, in May, when Luna Rossa also beat the Kiwis in the final. The regatta does not count towards the America’s Cup itself, which New Zealand will defend in Naples in July 2027, but it is the closest thing yet to a head-to-head form guide between the defender and the challenger now widely seen as its biggest threat.
Before the regatta, Team New Zealand skipper Nathan Outteridge had framed the weekend with a question. “That’s the million-dollar question, right – how do you beat Pete Burling?” he said, as reported by the NZ Herald. Four days later the question was still unanswered.
Luna Rossa was the stand-out boat for the whole event. According to the Herald, the Italians topped the fleet racing with 71 points, winning four of the eight fleet races. Team New Zealand finished second on 56 points, which was enough to secure a place in the final with a race to spare, and France’s La Roche-Posay Racing Team was third on 48. Nine boats raced in the fleet, with ARC Team USA joining crews from Italy, New Zealand, France, Switzerland and Britain in the one-design AC40 foiling yachts.
The Kiwi crew of Outteridge, Seb Menzies, Andy Maloney and Iain Jensen collected five top-three finishes but did not win a race, and the Herald noted they came away without a single win in nine races, or 12 counting the practice races.
The final was decided early. As the top-ranked team, Luna Rossa chose to enter the starting box from the port side, with Team New Zealand coming in from starboard a few seconds later. Boating New Zealand reported that Outteridge and Menzies had the better of the pre-start, pushing the Italians high and early before splitting right, but one slow tack let Luna Rossa through.
Outteridge said the team had fought for the right side of the course. “We really wanted the right-hand side in the start. We fought hard for it but we were a little bit late with our final tack and trigger off the line,” he told the Herald. “If you give Pete [Burling] and the Luna Rossa crew just an inch, they’ll take a mile. And we paid the price for that.”
From there Burling and co-helm Marco Gradoni covered every move. Boating New Zealand said the Kiwi boat was actually quicker in a straight line, hitting a top speed of 42.9 knots against the Italians’ 39.8, and closed to within 70 metres on the second upwind leg. But every time Team New Zealand tacked, Luna Rossa tacked on top of them, keeping them in dirty air against the right-hand boundary. The Italians tacked 25 times to the Kiwis’ 23, almost all of them to stay in control.
Gradoni was blunt about what the week showed. “I think we showed to the world that at this event, we were the best by far, and I’m super happy with the result,” he said, in comments published by Boating New Zealand.
Luna Rossa came to Naples with a reshaped crew. Gradoni and trimmer Maria Giubilei were promoted from the Italian women and youth team that raced in Cagliari, and Gianluigi Ugolini took the other trimming role. Giubilei was the only woman in any of the principal crews in Naples.
Burling’s switch to the Italian syndicate has been the dominant storyline of this America’s Cup cycle. He won three Cups with Team New Zealand, in 2017, 2021 and 2024, before leaving the team. Newswire covered his first regatta against his old team in Sardinia in May.
Team New Zealand says the result is not a reason to panic. “The Luna Rossa guys sailed really well all weekend, and we came up short again, but it’s all right we’ve got more time until next year to keep improving,” Outteridge told RNZ.
He said the two AC40 regattas had mostly been about building a new crew after big changes to the boat’s personnel, and to how it raced and communicated. The America’s Cup match itself will be sailed in the much bigger AC75 yachts, and Outteridge told RNZ that “the main focus from tomorrow onwards is the performance development of the AC75.” The crew is heading straight back to Auckland to resume sailing Team New Zealand’s AC75, Taihoro, while most of the design and engineering team has stayed at home all year working on the boat. Newswire reported in July on the team’s first sail on the Bay of Naples.
There was better news for the younger Kiwi sailors. Team New Zealand’s women and youth crew, skippered by Jake Pye with Erica Dawson as co-helm, finished fifth overall and took the women and youth trophy. Boating New Zealand reported they finished level on 44 points with Luna Rossa’s second crew, the Sardinia trophy holders, and won on countback thanks to beating the whole fleet in race five, despite capsizing between races on Saturday. The AC40s will be used for the Women’s and Youth America’s Cup events next year, so that result is a genuine marker.
Other New Zealanders were spread through the fleet. Jason Saunders trimmed for the French team, while Phil Robertson was a helmsman for Switzerland’s Tudor Team Alinghi, which sat third going into the last day before a penalty ended its hopes of making the final.
Two AC40 regattas, two Luna Rossa wins. The consolation for Team New Zealand is that the Cup is won in AC75s, where design counts for more and the defender has historically held the edge. The worry is that the man who knows the Kiwi team best has now outsailed it twice, and the next time the two meet it will be for the Auld Mug itself.
Is Team New Zealand right to shrug off these AC40 losses, or should Peter Burling’s two wins set off alarm bells before the defence in Naples? Tell us what you think in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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