Argo Group Gold Cup 2015 – Keith Swinton’s Black Swan Racing from Australia and Chris Steele’s 36 Below Racing from New Zealand have advanced to the Quarterfinal Round at the 67th annual edition.
The two crews led the Repechage Round yesterday and then held on today through a long day of racing to advance to the next round. Swinton won the repechage with a 6-1 record while Steele was second at 5-2. Racing was interrupted for nearly four hours as the wind died from the west and filled in from the northwest.
The two crews join six others that qualified after initial round robin racing at the $100,000 match racing regatta. With the multiple rounds robin complete the event moves into its ladder-style knockout phase. The quarterfinals, semifinals and final are all first-to-three points.
Headlining the quarterfinals is Taylor Canfield’s US One team from the U.S. Virgin Islands. Canfield’s crew is the only one to go undefeated through the rounds robin. That earned the crew the right to choose their opponent and they’ll square off against Steele’s 36 Below Racing. Canfield won the Argo Group Gold Cup in 2012 and has placed third each of the past two seasons. He chose to race Steele because the Kiwi is the number eight seed in the quarterfinals.
Other quarterfinal matches pit Phil Robertson’s WAKA Racing against Adam Minoprio’s BlackMatch in a battle of Kiwi teams. “The winner picks up the tab Sunday night,” said Minoprio.
Eric Monnin’s Swiss Match Race Team races Björn Hansen’s Nautiska Racing from Sweden. “People have a tough time telling Swedish and Swiss apart, so we’re going to help them out,” said Hansen.
The remaining match pits Ian Williams’ GAC Pindar against Swinton’s Black Swan Racing. “Ian’s a master at starting, but it’s easy to put pressure on him when he loses a few races,” said Swinton.
Notable for not advancing were the two America’s Cup crews, Dean Barker’s SoftBank Team Japan and Francesco Bruni’s Artemis Racing. Both skippers are accomplished match racers and have enjoyed past success at the Argo Group Gold Cup. But they’ve spent more time in the past few years racing foiling catamarans, a far different craft than the International One-Design sloop featured in the Gold Cup.
Barker and Bruni both spoke of the difficulty of coming into a world championship match race regatta with new crews and little practice.
“It’s a big ask to come to a regatta like this with a new group and expect to do well,” said Barker, who’ll be skippering SoftBank Team Japan at the America’s Cup World Series next week. “I felt like we were sailing better at the end of the regatta, but we had a few races go against us when we were leading. The positive is that we got to sail together as a group and build our communications going into next week.