KEY POINTS:
The Italian media are struggling to understand how Luna Rossa, a team that massacred Oracle, now find themselves in danger of being sunk by Team New Zealand.
Luna Rossa trail Team New Zealand 4-0 in the best-of-nine race Louis Vuitton series final in Valencia. The Italians could be
eliminated tonight.
In La Stampa, Giovanni Cerruti asked why Luna Rossa, who killed Chris Dickson's BMW Oracle Racing in the semifinals 5-1, are not coping with Team New Zealand.
"What is happening?" he asked. "James Spithill is not winning the starts, Torben Grael is getting lost in the wind."
Respected Italian journalist Gian Luca Pasini, writing for La Gazzetta dello Sport, said the Italian boat had lost three times to a New Zealand boat that had demonstrated it was "clearly advanced".
Pasini said Team New Zealand skipper Dean Barker and his afterguard were a lot more polished than the Italians, perhaps because of their tough semifinal clash with the Spanish.
"They do not make mistakes," he wrote. Like Cerruti, Pasini said the relationship between Luna Rossa's tactician Grael and the weather team was not working as well as it did in the semifinals.
"The result is that the first three calls have been revealed as mistaken," Pasini wrote. "Talented Australian helmsman Spithill has also not been able to dominate Barker as he did Chris Dickson in the semifinals."
Cerruti said the Italians must win the start and that Grael must take the boat to where there was greater wind.
If that did not happen they would be forced to concede to the "masters of New Zealand. They cannot say it is bad luck, they cannot use that as an excuse," Cerruti said. But after three years there was little they could change now, he conceded.
In the first three races of the Louis Vuitton challenger final, Team New Zealand's NZL92 has been shown to have the wood on the Italians in certain conditions. It is not entirely surprising.
Going into the challenger series, it was a common belief that Emirates Team New Zealand and Oracle had a click of speed over the Italians.
While Team New Zealand have made no big changes to NZL92 since the regatta started, NZL92 is sporting some new gear in the final. They have used some new mainsails, new spinnakers and are using an innovative covering on a pit winch. The winches have a type of lid covering them when they are not in use to prevent windage.
TNZ revealed a new one in race three, which looked a bit like a cyclist's racing helmet. In that same race, they used a lighter mainsail and looked good in light air with choppy conditions.
While those changes are visible it would be safe to assume they have other new gear which is not.