SailJuice Blog

Gavin Brady was on typically chatterbox form after today’s race against +39 Challenge. Brady is always good for a quote.

From what Brady said this afternoon at the media zone, he’s more interested in racing the Kiwis to be able to compare boatspeed rather than gaining that top spot in the Semi Finals, which would give the winner the option of picking their opponent.

Here’s a clip of what he said about the much anticipated race-off between the Kiwis and BMW Oracle: “I think it’s pretty important. Both teams are going to be full on in that last race, because we’ve only raced them once with our best equipment. We’ve raced them in flat water in 8 knots of wind. So it would be interesting to see some different performances in maybe more wind and choppier water.

“We haven’t seen the best of USA 98 yet, and I’m sure they feel the same. We need to see our mode against theirs. We’re going to have a couple of days off, and then we want to see how we mode our boat against the boat in the Semis.

“We’ll get into remoding our equipment, all our keels, masts and rudders. We’ve got different equipment we can pull off the shelf and put them on the boat. Hopefully we know exactly how to fight against them.”

Surely booking that top spot in the Semis is important too, though? “In a normal match race regatta, you feel like you have a massive advantage picking your opponent. Psychologically it would be nice to be able to pick your opponent, but really that’s just a feelgood factor. Whoever you don’t pick you’ll still end up racing them later.

“Race them sooner or later, it doesn’t really matter. In this regatta, coming 2nd in the Louis Vuitton is no different to coming 5th. We’ve got to race everyone at some stage.”