Toyota dockside in Bermuda: The pivotal moment for Team New Zealand

By Peter Lester

If you were looking for a turning point in Team New Zealand's challenger series campaign, put a big circle around the second day of the Louis Vuitton final against Artemis Racing.

With inconsistent weather modelling showing a mixed bag of conditions, Emirates Team New Zealand went into the day with a different foil set-up to Artemis. The weather gods did not deliver the light air Team NZ had been expecting, which meant their boat set-up was out of range.

It was a precarious predicament for Team NZ to be in. Not only could they have been staring down the barrel of a 3-0 defeat for the day against an Artemis team that had looked pretty much unstoppable in that 14-16 knot range their boat was moded for, Team NZ could also have suffered serious gear damage.

Those fears looked like they were going to be realised when Artemis convincingly took out the first race and square the series. But the New Zealand crew showed incredible resilience and skill to come back and take out the next two races in testing conditions.

They managed the boat around the track incredibly well, using their blistering upwind pace to wear down the Artemis team, and most importantly, protected the equipment they had.

It was a pivotal moment. Under incredible adversity they survived the day and moved to match point in the series.

They wrapped up the final yesterday with a real show of dominance. Team NZ had the right gear on, they were in the right wind range, and we saw how devastating it was.

You have to give big wraps to Peter Burling and sailing coaches Murray Jones and Ray Davies for the big gains made in the startbox area. They have obviously worked up some strong strategies, and that was obvious in yesterday's two light air starts in which Burling was completely dominant.

Burling had done pretty well with his starts the day before as well, and had been pretty even off the line with Artemis, but because of the way the boat was set up, they couldn't match the Swedish boat for speed down the first reach.

Throughout the regatta questions have been asked about Burling's starting - and he answered those pretty well on the last day. But the reality is, if you look back on the Louis Vuitton final, Artemis Racing also made a lot of errors, and that all came from the pressure the Kiwis were applying.

Artemis were really strong in that 12-15 knot range, but their foil programme was probably a bit too one-dimensional, and outside of that range the Swedish-flagged boat was vulnerable and were making mistakes because of pressure.

We saw them go over the boundary, skipper Nathan Outteridge go over the side, over the start line early, and a couple of bad tactical calls.

So one of the big growth areas for Team NZ over that final was how they responded to pressure, and how they applied pressure on the other team.

One of the big standouts for me was the improvement Team NZ made in their race planning and course management.

Team NZ went into the final with those questions still hovering over their heads over whether the team were still under-raced and as the series played out, it was clear the crew's critical decision making was getting better and better.

The Kiwi team has made a strong statement in the challenger final and what played out is exactly what Oracle Team USA don't want.