Louis Vuitton Cup 2007 & Mascalzone Latino Capitalia Team

Valencia - 13-04-2007

Cameron Dunn: “I don’t think anyone was sandbagging”

Cameron Dunn reflects on Act 13 and the upcoming Louis Vuitton Round Robin

MLCT: Many say that MLCT is stronger in fleet racing. How is MLCT preparing for the first round robin of match racing? Will it be tougher?

CD: “I don’t necessarily think right now that Mascalzone Latino is a stronger fleet race team than match race. We’ve been training very hard for the last two years, solely on match racing and haven’t paid any attention whatsoever to fleet racing. Yes, we have people on the team, such as Vasco, who have a very good history in fleet racing; but I think the level of our match racing has improved immensely in the last two years, as well. Will the challenger selection series be tougher than the Act 13? Yes it will be tougher, just by its nature it means so much, and that’s what we’ve been training for. But tougher just because it’s match racing and not fleet racing…no.”

MLCT: How was the spirit of the crew just after Act 13 finished?

CD: “The spirit of the crew after Act 13 has been fantastic. Of course, the confidence is there - which is very important. We’ve sailed a nice, clean regatta without necessarily setting the world on fire, but we kept our nose out of trouble, sailed very consistently, and that showed in our results. Having our worst race as sixth out of a twelve boat fleet is a very good series.”

MLCT: How do you feel about Ita 99’s performance?

CD: “The performance of Ita 99 through the Act, and leading up to now, has been promising. It’s a very good, all-around boat. We haven’t found a major flaw in it through the wind range. We’re very happy with its consistent boat speed from 7 knots up to 25 knots - which is exactly what we were wanting from the very beginning. We said to the designers that we wanted a good all-around boat. We weren’t trying to focus our boat too heavily in one wind range. We wanted to be able to compete in all conditions, because in this time of year through the round robins we really don’t know what we’re going to get. It could be anything, as we’ve seen from the weather that we’ve had in the last couple of weeks. It’s anyone’s guess as to what’s going to happen in the first week- next week- and by the end of next week, we’ve already done a whole round robin, so it could be half of the racing.”

MLCT: Any impressions from the race course and weather conditions?

CD: “The weather conditions are going to play a factor in the racing. It’s very different sailing in the off-shore westerly winds compared to the north-easterly low pressure systems that we’ve been having lately, and then compare that to what we remember as a normal Valencian sea-breeze. It seems such a long time ago that we’ve sailed in that. Different boats will have different competitive ranges. As I’ve said before, we are happy with ours through a variety of ranges. I think some of the other teams are not quite so strong in their versatility. Some boats have shown that they’re quite quick in some conditions and maybe they fall off the pace quite quickly in others. I guess we just have to hope, for our sake, to make our life a little easier, that we stike some teams out of their favorite zone. It will always make life a little easier.”
MLCT: Impressions about the other Challengers?

CD: “I think right now, looking at all the Challengers, the LV Cup is going to be an extremely close event. Any team out there – bar China (I hate to say it) – is going to be able to win races against anybody on any given day. There is no doubt in my mind that if we don’t sail well against any of the teams out there, we can lose. I think that is the same with Oracle and the same with Team New Zealand. Yes, they are the two strong teams, but if they don’t get off the start line well or don’t get the first shift against any one of us, they will lose the race. There is not enough of a speed difference now like there was in the past, so that a team can be behind and know that over time they’ll chip away and their boat speed will do the job. I think that there are going to be some extremely exciting round robins and we will see some upsets. My feeling is that the final decision on who goes on to the semi finals is going to come down to the last act of round robin two. It’s going to be all on. There are some key match ups on the last day. It’s the way the draw works out. It’s the key people racing each other through the whole range. The stress is going to be up and the anxiety. We are looking forward to that. It’s what we’ve been training for.”

MLCT: Do you think anybody was sandbagging?

CD: “I don’t think anyone was sandbagging. We have to remember that both TNZ and Oracle will be using different boats in the LV series than what they used in Act 13. I think those two teams, especially Oracle, didn’t necessarily want to show Alinghi their fastest boat at this time. They’ve been quite open about that in some of their comments. They were happy to use their second boat and learn as much as possible. I don’t know if there is a huge speed difference between their first and second boats. From what we hear, the Oracle second boat may be more of a special light air boat. I’m sure it’s pretty damn fast in the breeze as well. There’s no question there. So to sum up, it wasn’t necessarily sand bagging, but maybe those teams weren’t using their best gear either.”

MLCT: Is Alinghi unbeatable?

CD: “Certainly not. No team is unbeatable. They are the top of the table right now. They are the team to beat, but no one is unbeatable. The speeds are so much closer than they were before. If they don’t sail well, the top challenger will be able to beat them. I can gaurantee you now, it is certainly not going to be a five – nil America’s Cup final either way. It’s going to be a close event. The level has risen so much higher. A small mistake can cost you a race quite easily. Yes, they are number one, and if I was going to put money on it- which I’m not allowed to do- maybe I’d put some on Alinghi. However they can be beaten. There is still two months to go and a lot can happen in two months time.”

MLCT: Are you surprised Alinghi won the fleet racing so easily?

CD: “I certainly wasn’t surprised that Alinghi won the fleet racing. I was surprised that they won it so easily. Sometimes things can work out that well. I think they sailed very well tactically. Yes, they were fast. Yes, they had a little edge. I think that Brad put them in very good positions around the race course. From my perspective in the coach boat following the fleet, whenever they were in a tough position they always seemed to put themselves relative to the fleet in a very smart way. Whereas other teams weren’t so clued up on that, and managed to get themselves in ping-pong matches where they ended up getting bounced around, back and forth, between little groups. Whereas Alinghi managed to keep themselves out of that very nicely. Whether or not some of the teams didn’t tack on them because they were the defender, I’m not so sure about that. I think their boat positioning was very good.”

MLCT: Do you think that Alinghi’s easy win is a serious wake up call for the Challengers?

CD: “Alinghi’s performance in Act 13 probably gives everybody a wake up call. I think the main thing it showed to us as a team is that we still need to get faster. But that’s nothing new. We knew that we needed to get faster and that’s our intention – to get faster the whole way through. What it did show us is just how polished they look all around the race course with their crew work and their tactics. Their boat looks nice, the sails were very very nice, everything they did. Maybe if you had to score or rank the different facets of the boat, and the tactics, and the sails, and the race management, they would have scored first in a lot of those areas. If they didn’t score first, then they would have been in the top three. That’s exactly what you need to do. You need to get an A on your scorecard in a lot of areas and they certainly do that. Whereas the Challengers, a lot of us maybe get the odd C or something like that, which really lets you down. At the end of the day, it wasn’t a serious wake up call, but it perhaps, gave everybody a jolt. It was like, “Hey guys, we need to improve a lot here in our manouvering, in our sail choice, our sail design, and the way we sail the boat.” It probably helped the Challengers more than anything else. I think that if they had gone out and maybe sandbagged a bit more, and not have won so convincingly, or finished second or third or fourth, but knew they were holding something back, the Challengers could have easily fallen into a false sense of security. Maybe they were sandbagging and still won by that much…then we’re in a hell of a lot of trouble. We won’t find that out until the Match. Let’s hope not.”