America’s Cup: Great Britain cut New Zealand lead to 4-2 in Barcelona

Great Britain cut New Zealand’s lead in the America’s Cup to 4-2 by winning both races on Wednesday.

Ben Ainslie’s Ineos Britannia team fell 4-0 behind on Monday in the best-of-13 series in Barcelona.

Britain took advantage of a poor start by Emirates Team New Zealand in race five to establish a 1.3km gap and win by one minute 18 seconds.

In race six they steadily built a lead and held on despite a New Zealand comeback.

“We’re back in it, that’s huge,” said Britannia skipper Ainslie.

“Solid effort from the team. Still a long way to go but the comeback’s on. Every day we’re getting better at driving this boat.

“It’s a good win for us. Tricky on the start, we trained for those situations, we managed to make it stick and get them off the foil – it was pretty tough for them from then on.”

New Zealand helmsman Peter Burling said: “It’s a bit of a shame we couldn’t get across them and dropped off the foils.

“It’s obviously frustrating to be off the foils, we made a little error being a tiny bit too late but it was a bit unlucky.

“That’s sport and I’m looking forward to the next one.”

New Zealand’s Nathan Outteridge said: “We didn’t really execute the best day ourselves today, we let ourselves down, we’ll go and review that and come back next time in better shape.”

Races seven and eight take place on Friday, with race 13 scheduled for Monday.

New Zealand have won the past two America’s Cups, while Britain have never won the competition in its 173-year history.