Friday, February 12, 2010

AC-33: How to make Ernesto smile

Simple: ask him if he wished his was bigger! Was that a hint that our old friend Buff is somewhere in the audience?

Apart from that rather a grim set of faces from Alinghi at the press conferences. Indeed Ernesto several times talked about there being just the one more race to go, rather than the potential two.

But as they agreed they don't have time to build a wing by Sunday, just do some tweaks.

"Lets see" said designer Rolf Vrolijk:

But the odds on the Betfair market say another story. Alinghi are now at 3.2 while BMW Oracle are a wafer thin 1.06.

As Queen Victoria was once told, "there is no second".

3 comments:

Turinas said...

I don't know if you watched the press conference. Butterworth looked defeated. When asked about the design differences, he just galred at the journo and said "Did you watch the race?" Their whole demanor said "It's over"

A mate of mine also pointed out that BOR was probably holding back

bonnie said...

I was just amazed to drop onto the AC site the second time this morning & see that they were actually racing. About time! I had been getting a bit cranky (see rant on Messing about in sailboats post with the kid & the model) & when I'd first peeked this morning they were still holding...I was just thinking "Oh, they are never going to actually have this race!"

Alas, although there are certain events for which my company will bring out the big-screen tv's & allow staff to watch, the America's Cup was not one of those.

JP said...

Yup, watched both and that Butterworth moment was pretty impressive.

If I had been BOR and that far ahead I'd have throttled back a bit too.