America's Cup: Kiwis rolling over the competition at Cascais

8:55 PM Thu 11 Aug 2011 GMT

'Starting clean in the second fleet race of Day 4 of the America's Cup World Series in Cascais, Portugal.' Chris Cameron/ETNZ

Emirates Team New Zealand is quickly becoming the star of the show at the America's Cup World Series - Cascais, Portugal. For the second consecutive day, the New Zealanders earned maximum points, after beating Artemis Racing in a match racing duel for first place to conclude a full day of racing.

The Emirates team picked up where they left off yesterday, winning two of the three fleet races to qualify at the top of the pile for the match racing final. Then, they beat the Artemis Racing crew handily, when the Swedish team accumulated a series of penalties around the race course.

'It's very satisfying for us to feel like we are really improving and starting to get more and more to grips with the multihulls,' said a very understated Dean Barker, the New Zealand skipper, when he returned to the dock.

The battle for third and fourth on the day was between ORACLE Racing stable mates Russell Coutts and James Spithill. But the highly anticipated match was nearly over before it began, as Coutts was forced to restart after he jumped the line ahead of the starting gun, handing an insurmountable lead to Spithill.

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Among the guest racers on Thursday was America's Cup legend John Bertrand, the skipper of Australia II, the first challenger to win the Cup in 1983. In the previous 132-years of America's Cup competition, no visiting team had been able to pry the trophy from the defending teams of the New York Yacht Club. Bertrand's team won a thrilling come-from-behind victory that changed the course of sporting history. He sailed in the Cup as recently as 1995, and has been a keen observer ever since.

'This was my first race on an AC45,' he said. 'The boats are extremely physical and the racing puts the crews under tremendous pressure to make the right decision at the right time. There is no margin for error. We haven't seen anything yet!'