Race 8 comes down to the wire as Burling fires, the final is set, and Luna Rossa meets ETNZ in the final

The final is confirmed. Peter Burling’s Luna Rossa against Emirates Team New Zealand. Everything that happened across three days on the Gulf of Angels came down to this.

Race 8, the last fleet race of the qualifying series, ended with Luna Rossa’s Principal Team taking the win, La Roche-Posay Racing Team in second, and the two finalists locked in.

Going into the race only a single point separated the crews fighting for those top two berths. What followed delivered on every bit of that.

Luna Rossa’s Women and Youth began the race the same way they had begun Race 7, and paid the same price. Marco Gradoni’s crew, the team that had set the pace for the entire regatta, approached on port tack looking to force their way across the fleet at the start. The gap wasn’t there. A clear penalty was called and the boat had to go all the way back and restart from scratch. For a crew that had won three races in this regatta, it was the second consecutive start they had thrown away before the first mark. Margherita Porro acknowledged afterwards it was an unnecessary risk. The wind had gone right, and a port start against the full fleet was always going to demand perfection.

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Burling and the Luna Rossa senior crew, Ruggero Tita, Umberto Molineris and Vittorio Bissaro, got out cleanly and went to work. Through the middle legs they controlled the fleet methodically, making extra manoeuvres count, crowding rivals onto the wrong side, and giving nothing away. On the final downwind leg the race was already decided. A clean jibe, a smooth run to the line, and Luna Rossa crossed first.

La Roche-Posay Racing Team were second again. Quentin Delapierre’s crew, with Olympic champions Diego Botín and Florian Trittel, put together a strong back half of the regatta. Four finishes of fourth or better across the final three races, and the kind of trajectory that bodes well for the road to Naples.

GB1 carried their Race 7 form to finish third, Dylan Fletcher and Ben Cornish crossing just ahead of Tudor Team Alinghi in fourth. Emirates Team New Zealand came home fifth, which was enough. The ETNZ Women and Youth crew, who needed fifth to stay in the hunt for the final, finished sixth. Their title challenge is over, but no team across this three-day regatta made a stronger impression.

Three race wins, a dominant points lead through most of the week, and then two consecutive disqualifications at the start gun when it mattered most. A brutal finish for a crew that had outpaced the fleet when everything was working.

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Burling and Luna Rossa will now face Emirates Team New Zealand in a winner-takes-all match race. For Burling, the weight of that fixture needs no explanation. Three America’s Cup wins with the New Zealand programme, and now he lines up against his former team, in the most compressed format the sport produces. One race. One result.

During Race 8, as Burling stretched clear of the fleet on the final leg, the commentary put it plainly: “Impossible to understate the pressure on this man’s shoulders.” Today, at least, he answered it.

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