New Zealand wins convincingly, to face Italy in finals

by John Navas

A commanding, convincing win for New Zealand sets up what should be a fantastic Finals against Italy in the elimination for the America's Cup. I personally think it's too close to call -- both teams look fast and solid with great boats and great drivers. If forced to pick, I'd give a slight edge to Italy -- they've had consistently great tactics and have made almost no mistakes. But much will depend on team emotion going into the finals -- the trick will be to be near peaking but not too near, so team momentum can build and be sustained through what may be a long series. I think New Zealand was sandbagging a bit against Spain to keep from peaking in the Semi-finals, only showing its real performance in the last race.

The Finals are scheduled to start Friday June 1, early in the morning California time (probably about 0600, but check at 0530 to be safe).

• Free coverage:
• Live/real-time audio and still images: http://www.americascup.com/en/
• Internet TV: http://www.americascupanywhere.com/internet_tv/
  (including archived coverage)
• Live Sailing (pay):
• Internet: http://www.americascupanywhere.com/eu/
  
• Cell phone: http://www.americascupanywhere.com/eu/lsm/features/

If you have Internet broadband, be sure to check out the archived Internet TV! There's great video of the two fouls by Oracle-BMW at the start of Day 5. (For smooth video, you may need to reduce speed in Settings -- I'm getting best results at 400Kbs.)