Yachting: Prada facing `Blackwash'

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

With crushed spirits and bruised egos, Prada must climb back into the saddle today and try to stay in the America's Cup.

This could be their last ride.

Prada skipper Francesco de Angelis, looking like a weary man now, had wanted to turn yesterday's race into a "rodeo" - to get more aggressive with the boys on Team New Zealand's black boat.

But yet again, the Italians got bucked off too early, and are now staring at a 5-0 defeat in the America's Cup.

Yesterday's fall was the one that hurt the most. Luna Rossa had the lead but handed it over to Team New Zealand with one wrong move, one-tenth of the way into the race.

It seemed an inconceivable error - Prada had the favoured right side but relinquished it to the Kiwis, who never looked back, winning by a comfortable 1m 49s.

Yet Team New Zealand skipper Russell Coutts had every sympathy for the Italians.

"I've done it myself," he shrugged. "When we crossed sides, to be honest, I thought it wasn't a great situation. "I was concerned that we might not have made the right move. But then it became clear - we'd got the roll of the dice."

The Italians talk of fighting to the end, but the stopwatch tells the story of this Cup. Everyone knows the silver bullet of Luna Rossa is not a slow boat, but it has never finished within a minute of Team New Zealand's black juggernaut.

The New Zealanders have excelled on their own waters through sharp sailing and a stream of little improvements to their boat that no one else tried.

Yesterday they pulled another trick out of their hat in the pre-start - trying their Code Zero headsail for the first time in an America's Cup. It is a large, light almost translucent sail used in flukey winds to help the boat to accelerate.

The Kiwis have been testing it for over two years in solitude, until the challengers spotted it a couple of months ago. With three minutes to the start-gun, the black boat unfurled the not-so-secret weapon and pulled away out of a luffing duel.

Coutts was convinced its magic worked. "The distance between the boats when we rolled it back up was such that we could have attacked [Prada]," he said. "But we chose to fight for position."

A minute later the sail was gone, and Team New Zealand led the way to the start-line at the left-hand pin end, Prada following them across 7s later.

Prada tacked away immediately; Team New Zealand, already a boat length ahead, followed. When the boats came together, Coutts could not cross in front to get the right side. Again he had to tack away.

Prada got a whiff of a windshift and took the lead, but in a matter of moments, they blew it.

Instead of protecting their advantage, they crossed in front and relinquished the precious right to the New Zealanders. There was the end of the race - less than 15 minutes gone, not even halfway up the first beat.

The Italians believed they were doing the right thing by going left. "We thought the wind was going to shift back to the left," de Angelis said.

But later they admitted they had a radio breakdown with their weather team just before the five-minute gun. "We didn't have the last comments on our weather, which was a little problem for us," tactician Torben Grael said.

Team New Zealand simply sailed away from that crucial moment on - at the top mark they were 45s ahead.

The Kiwis worked on a winch problem at the start of the run, and Prada nibbled away at their lead, but it was a mere 6s gain.

From there it was clinical: the black boat picked up another minute upwind when the breeze went soft, and sailed the rest of the way virtually out on their own.