The match race turned on the start. Emirates Team New Zealand charged hard for the pin end and arrived just under half a second early. Skipper Nathan Outteridge tried to kill the speed at the last moment, the boat splashing down in an attempt to bleed off the excess, but it wasn’t enough. Luna Rossa had a clean start and immediately had the lane they needed. From that point, the race was theirs to lose.
“It was a little disappointing that start,” Outteridge said afterwards. “We were in a really strong spot. Just charged for the pin end a bit early. Couldn’t quite kill it at the end. It gave them a start, and then after that there weren’t many opportunities.”
Burling and his crew, Ruggero Tita, Umberto Molineris and Vittorio Bissaro, managed the race with quiet control. They kept their manoeuvre count down, sailed clean, and extended steadily through each leg. ETNZ pushed hard on the final downwind run but could never get close enough to threaten. Luna Rossa crossed first.
Tita spoke immediately after the gun. “The whole team did an incredible job. We felt this morning something was clicking. We started pushing really hard from the start and everything came together.”
For Burling, the win carried its own charge. He started the regatta with a seventh place on the opening day, and his team spent much of the first two days working through errors while the Women and Youth crew were already setting the pace. The match race win capped a final day in which the principal team won both their races.
“Obviously the first race in the grey uniform, it was great,” Burling said. “We gave ourselves a bit of work to do early in the week. We made a few mistakes. But to come out like we did today and really show what we’ve got, and win the first event for Luna Rossa, super pleasing. The way Marco and the Women and Youth team have been pushing us on and making our lives hard in training just managed to raise the level for everyone. Amazing day to wrap it up.”
The result mattered beyond the trophy. For Luna Rossa team director Max Sirena, who rebuilt the programme around a mix of Cup experience and emerging Italian talent, this was the first public proof of that approach. Burling’s arrival, Tita’s move from Olympic classes to the AC40, the strength of Marco Gradoni’s Women and Youth crew through the fleet racing; all of it came together on Sunday.
For ETNZ, defeat is not the whole picture. They reached the final, raced well across the qualifying series, and Outteridge kept his perspective. “The America’s Cup is next year,” he said. “We’ll take a lot of learnings out of this. We didn’t win the first event last campaign either. We came back much stronger. I’m sure we’ll be a lot better for the next event.”
| Louis Vuitton PR1 Sardinia – Match Race Final | ||
|---|---|---|
| Pos. | Team | Result |
| 1st | Luna Rossa – Principal Team | Winner |
| 2nd | Emirates Team New Zealand | |
Luna Rossa’s Women and Youth team, who dominated most of the fleet racing only to fall apart at the start gun in the final two races, were on the dock to celebrate. Gradoni’s crew set the standard that the whole programme raced up to. Their week shaped the regatta, even if it didn’t end the way they wanted.
The next preliminary regatta comes later this year. Naples 2027 is the destination. On the evidence of Sardinia, Luna Rossa will arrive with something to say.
