What was said last night at the team de-briefs? And what’s on the cards today?

If there’s one topic of conversation around the media centre this morning it’s what went on in the team briefings last night. Most would have given their right arm to have been a fly on the wall. But given what we saw on the water yesterday I wouldn’t mind betting the following:

Emirates Team New Zealand – Well done everyone, a good start but lets take each day as it comes. It’s a long way to go, the margins are clearly small and we can’t afford to make mistakes. So lets have a look at where we tripped up and what we could have done better.

Oracle Racing – The sky doesn’t fall on your head on day one. Let’s keep calm about this, we know we have speed and the ability to turn on the afterburners if we get our nose ahead and have a clear run.
Sure, the Kiwis seem to have a knot on us around the course but as we all know, when you’re leading you sail more efficiently and can chose where you want to go to keep your speed up rather than having your strategy dictated to you.
This is no time for radical change, we keep on doing what we know we can do well and concentrate on not making the small mistakes early in the race that multiplied up as the races played out.
The Kiwis are not invincible, they messed up at the bottom gate of race one and we so nearly had them.
If we just keep up the pressure they’ll crack.

What both teams will of course be looking at is the weather.
For today’s conditions think yesterday less 10 percent.
Breeze will start at around 14 knots for the first race and build to a max of 18 knots, (whereas yesterday nudged to 20kts).

Perhaps of more significance is the tide. Today there will be flood tide for most if not all of the racing period but the significant issue will be at the start of race 1. Here the flood tide will be strong, sweeping the boats away from the committee boat and down towards the pin end. Every incentive to be the windward boat today.

Racing starts 1315 local (2113 BST)

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