From the top

“For Emirates Team New Zealand, obviously the primary focus is on being ready and as prepared as possible for the America’s Cup Match from 12 October until the last race. In saying that, of course you want to perform well in whatever racing you do, but we have to remind ourselves of our end goal.

“Still, the preliminary regatta provides a really good opportunity to line up with the other teams and get a feel for each other as well as some real-life racing and starting practice and course management.”

With the America’s Cup being a design game of cat and mouse, does Shoeb expect to see the full armoury on display in the Preliminary Regatta?

“It’s always the question that never really gets an answer until the end of the event. I don’t expect teams to be sand- bagging, they will all want to get a true gauge on their relative performance with each other.

“There will be differences between the performance of boats in the Preliminary regatta and the last race of the America’s Cup for sure … all the teams will have a planned development program all the way through to the end of the event.

“So, we can expect all teams to get faster and more refined around the course, probably the team that can develop the most between now and October will win.”

Many commentators, and indeed the recon program, noted that teams excelled in certain conditions specific to their design and struggled in others, so how much will the weather conditions in the Preliminary Regatta dictate the outright success?

“That remains to be seen. We do know the conditions can vary a lot. Right now, there’s very nice summer sea-breeze conditions, which come October will change. So, we haven’t seen all the boats in a range of conditions yet.

“This could be one of the telling points of this America’s Cup, to see if there is any change in performance from boat to boat in the varying conditions or mixture of flat water, waves, low end or high-end wind speed.”

Talk to many around the Port Vell and pretty much universally they will say that Emirates Team New Zealand is the team to beat but as Chief operating Officer, Kevin Shoebridge is wary of everyone in this cycle saying, “From what we have seen so far, all teams look strong.

“We’ll be looking at all the teams closely as they all have some interesting design aspects. It is far too early to make assessments one way or another because all teams will be focused on their own programs.

“So we’ll wait and see but, obviously, as the intensity and progress of the event increases our specific focus will become a lot more narrowed! We’ll be looking to take as much as possible from across the board in the Preliminary Regatta – racing practice, performance analysis on ourselves and relative to our competitors, and really, for all teams, I’m sure it will be a very clear look at where teams are sitting relative to each other.”

It barely seems like a blink of an eye since Emirates Team New Zealand were blasting around the Hauraki Gulf and Barcelona last summer in their second generation AC75 Te Rehutai but now with Taihoro safely in Barcelona and gearing up for the Preliminary Regatta and the first two round robins of the Louis Vuitton Cup, there a palpable sense of excitement in the team.

“We’re very excited. After three-plus years of working flat out on design, build and development, all of a sudden, we are here. The last four months of the three-year program is upon us. Wow!”

Catch all the racing of the third and final Preliminary Regatta of the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup at americascup.com, with racing starting on 22 August 2024.