Checco Bruni: “Luna Rossa will be back.”In the meantime, here’s who Ben Ainslie is, the outfielder who beat us
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“Thank you guys, thank you for the support you gave us. You have made us excited. Luna Rossa will come back … it will come back strong.”
With these words from Italian AC75 helmsman Checco Bruni, Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli’s 37th America’s Cup, defeated by Ben Ainslie’s INEOS Britannia 7-4 in the Louis Vuitton Cup final, comes to an end.
Checco Bruni was echoed shortly afterwards by a bitter Max Sirena: “This is sport, there is a team that wins and one that loses, we have to congratulate them, but Luna Rossa will come back stronger,” is the Team Director’s succinct comment.
A visibly excited James Spithill perhaps puts an end to his America’s Cup career, “Yes maybe I have come to the end, we will see, behind me there are many young guys, new generation with great talent and with many skills, I am very confident for the future.”, concludes Checco Bruni.
Bravo Sir Ben
It will be a final duel between the British, who lost the America’s Cup in 1851 and never regained it, and the New Zealanders, defender of the “old jug.”
While Checco Bruni uttered, holding back tears, that phrase (taking it for granted that Luna Rossa will participate in the next America’s Cup), Baronet Sir Ben Ainslie, the start killer as they nicknamed him, raised to the sky the well-deserved Louis Vuitton Cup.
Well-deserved British victory, nothing to say.
Who is Sir Ben Ainslie
But who is the all-rounder who beat Luna Rossa and who now, 60 years after the last final in which the British participated, will try to snatch the Cup from the hands of Emirates Team New Zealand?
Let’s start by saying that Charles Benedict Ainslie, known as Ben, who was born in Macclesfield in 1977 into a family of sailors (his father Roddy participated in the first Whitbread, the round-the-world crewed race), is the strongest Olympic sailor of all time.
boatHe won a heart-stopping gold medal in the last 100 meters of the race at the 2012 London Olympics consigned him to history.
His fourth consecutive Olympic gold medal (three in the Finn, one in the Laser) plus the silver medal he won in Atlanta in 1996 among the Lasers: he is the most titled drifter in the history of world sailing (Paul Elvstrom won “only” four golds).
Not to mention the several world titles between Laser, Finn and match-racing he has won.
And the countless victories, starting with the Optimist, the boat on which he began sailing near Falmouth (where his parents lived in a cottage by the sea) bought for him second-hand by his parents as a Christmas present.
Ben Ainslie’s sailing baptism
“I woke up to find this Optimist in front of me,” says Ainslie. “I had never seen such a small boat before, but it was explained to me that it was for children up to 15 years old and that I had to drive it myself.
So we wasted no time putting it in the water.
We took the boat, Opalong, down to the beach and launched it.
There was a really nice pub about 400 meters away, it was the place where my parents used to hang out with their friends.
My father simply said, ‘You go out.
We’ll go to the pub and meet you there for lunch in fifteen minutes.’
I had never sailed alone before.
I only had my duffle coat and rubber boots on.
I asked my father, “What happens if the boat capsizes?”
He replied, “Oh, I think you have to hang onto the drift to right it. It will be all right. See you at the pub.”
The America’s Cup dream
Once, at the age of 35, he had won everything he could win on dinghies, Ainslie decided to chase a dream. A very ambitious dream.
To bring the America’s Cup back to England.
That accursed jug that, in the first edition of the world’s oldest sporting competition, the British put up for grabs in 1851 (the Hundred Guineas Cup), lost to the Americans and never returned to Her Majesty’s court.
The comeback on Oracle
Then again, he quickly proved his Cup skills in 2013. The baronet boarded Oracle Team USA for the 34th America’s Cup final, replacing John Kostecki as tactician when the situation was desperate. The Yankees were given up for dead but under Ainslie’s leadership they managed to overturn the result from 1-8 to 9-8. He then founded the Ben Ainslie Racing Team (BAR) with which he was eliminated in the 2017 Louis Vuitton semifinals of the 35th America’s Cup in Bermuda, the one for flying catamarans. His meeting with tycoon Jim Ratcliffe(we told you who he is and how his meeting with Ben Ainslie came about here), founder of the oil giant INEOS and the second richest man in England, changes the game and, certainly, the budgets available to Baronet Ben.
If the first challenge with INEOS Britannia’s flying AC75s ended in the Louis Vuitton final against our boys from Luna Rossa (7-1), in this latest America’s Cup Ben Ainslie and his crew have taken a nice revenge.
Now only the New Zealanders separate Sir Ben Ainslie from becoming the world’s top sailor. A little trivia: Ben Ainslie’s boats have always had the same name, Rita.
As a young boy, he was on a trip to Lanzarote for the Optimist World Championships.
His mother had visited the local shrine, taken a Santa Rita medallion and sewed it onto his life jacket.
Ben had then won the Championships.
That is whyBritanniais also called Rita by him and by all. Eugene Ruocco
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