Britain on brink of defeat in America’s Cup after losing two more races to NZ

It is match point in the America’s Cup. Ineos Britannia will need to beat Emirates Team New Zealand in every one of the five remaining races if they are to finally win the ‘auld mug’ for Great Britain.

After the fifth day of racing, they trail 6-2 in the best-of-13 series, which means that if the New Zealanders can win just one more race, with two more scheduled for Saturday, then the competition will be over.

Ineos Britannia’s skipper, Ben Ainslie, has overcome worse odds before, but you would be brave to back him to do it again now given New Zealand’s dominant performance. “It’s still not over yet,” Ainslie said, “so we’ll keep fighting.”

The momentum Ineos Britannia had built up by winning the fifth and sixth races on Wednesday lasted all of the opening 10 seconds of the seventh race. Emirates Team New Zealand pulled ahead as the wind picked up down the right side of the course. By the end of the first leg they had a 12-second lead, and by the start of the last it had grown to almost a minute.

“That was a tough race for us,” Ainslie said. “It looked like we were going to be in reasonable shape on the line, then the breeze kicked in on the right, and they did a good job of defending it.”

The conditions had changed, again. The sea state was flat, the wind offshore and erratic. The New Zealanders, spurred on by their own anger about their sloppy performance on Wednesday, did a superb job of navigating it all. They looked sharp, their manoeuvres were smooth, their route sure and their boat steady and swift.

By the time they came back past Ineos Britannia on the final leg of the seventh race, they were already a kilometre ahead. The eighth race wasn’t much closer and by end of the day the atmosphere on board the British boat was almost funereal.

Full report to follow shortly …