BARCELONA (SPAIN) (ITALPRESS) – Tomorrow it starts in earnest: racing for the Louis Vuitton Cup final begins in the sea off Barcelona. Back on the water, then, Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli, challenging Ineos Britannia. They are competing in the best of 13 match races: the first team to reach seven successes will win the event reserved for challengers and get a pass to the 37th America’s Cup. Waiting for the winner of this confrontation in the prestigious and historic sailing competition is the defender, namely Team Emirates New Zealand.
Scheduled for tomorrow are the first two races between the Italian AC75, with the Circolo della Vela Sicilia pennant, and the British boat. They will then return to the sea on September 28 and 29, and then finish the series in early October. For Luna Rossa, wanted by entrepreneur Patrizio Bertelli in 1997 and launched in 1999, this is the fifth final in the tournament reserved for challengers.
The Prada and Pirelli-branded boat has won in the past among challengers on two occasions, in 2000 and 2021 (when it was called the Prada Cup), then lost on both occasions in the America’s Cup to New Zealand. Two other times, however, Luna Rossa has been stopped in the final of the Louis Vuitton Cup, surrendering in both 2007 and 2013, as usual, in the face of the Kiwis, the true “black beast” of Italian sailors.
Over the course of the Round Robins, Ineos Britannia and the team with Sicilian Francesco Bruni and Australian Jimmy Spithill at the helm faced each other three times: Luna Rossa won one match race, the British the other two (including the tiebreaker to decree the first-place finisher of the first phase).
From tomorrow, however, a whole different story begins and on the eve there seems to be great balance between the two boats and the two teams. Certainly now the pressure will increase but the team with skipper and director Max Sirena has already shown, this year and in the past, that it can handle it best.
– photo Ipa Agency –
(ITALPRESS).
