Liv MacKay post Sail GP Denmark. Video / NZ Herald
By Matt Brown in Copenhagen
A Peter Burling masterclass has delivered a clean sweep of races for the New Zealand SailGP team in round four of the championship in Copenhagen.
In a round reduced to three fleet races and a podium race after a lack of wind cancelled the opening day's action, the New Zealanders picked up where they left off in Plymouth last month with a series of near-flawless races.
Having failed to make a podium race in their first season and the first two rounds this campaign, the Kiwis have now gone back-to-back and have rocketed into second place in the overall standings with 32 points, four behind leaders Australia.
Burling, criticised in the past for a lack of consistency at the starting line, was flawless starting in all four races as New Zealand became the first team in SailGP history to win every race in a regatta.
"When you walk away with a perfect day on the scoreboard, it's pretty unique in our sport and just for us it's an amazing effort. We obviously love sailing out here with enough breeze and a bit shifty and are really happy with how things went," Burling told the Herald.
"To win these things you have got to be pretty complete and be able to pick shifts, put the boat in the right place and sail the boat well and we are just trying to be solid everywhere.
"We've been saying all along as a group we've been improving and it felt like we were a lot better than the results we were showing early on in the season. We obviously got those couple of disappointing results and it just really motivated us to push it a bit harder, dig a bit deeper and I think it's just amazing credit to the whole group that we have."
For the first time in six events, series leaders and defending champions Australia missed out on the podium race on a countback to surprise finalists France, with host nation Denmark giving the huge crowd plenty to cheer about sailing consistently well to make the decider.
But the crowd were silenced immediately in the podium race when Burling shut the Danes out at the start and rounded the first mark just ahead of the French. It was tight early on as New Zealand led by three seconds around mark two and nine seconds around mark three.
The New Zealand SailGP team won all four races of a shortened event in Denmark. Photo: Ricardo Pinto/SailGP
By the fourth mark they had extended to a 20-second advantage and went on to complete a comprehensive win.
Earlier there was plenty of drama in the third fleet race where France and Australia were involved in an epic battle at the front of the fleet. Burling, who had copped a penalty on the second leg and had dropped to fifth after a fast start, clawed his way back through the fleet, sailing higher and faster than his rivals to cross ahead of Tom Slingsby who took a penalty that proved decisive. The Australians would finish the race fourth, allowing France to make the podium race for the first time.
Slingsby who has won back-to-back championships and still leads the series, credited the improvements of the New Zealand team.
"They absolutely dominated. I mean, no one's ever won every race. So honestly, I didn't even see them. They were either way out in front of us or they were on their way past us," Slingsby said.
"I have got to go back and look at the footage but they were just sailing exceptionally and yeah, they have raised the bar a bit even though we are ahead overall. They're on a big upward trend and we are on a bit of a downward trend here. So, we need to steady the ship and get back to the basics."
The Kiwis had started the day the way they finished in Plymouth last month with a perfectly timed start to the opening race, bursting through a gap in the fleet, hitting the line at speed and leading from start to finish.
They then nailed the start to the second race, finding a gap in the fleet and slingshotting to the front. New Zealand led Denmark around the first mark and stretched away, extending their lead to 11 seconds by the fourth mark and winning by more than 200 metres from the Danes.
While Australia's lead at the top of the standings has been cut to four points, the big losers of the round have been Sir Ben Ainslie's Great Britain who headed to Copenhagen in second place, but dropped to fifth, having been unable to race due to damaging their foils when they hit a rock in practice.
