Sir Ben Ainslie on INEOS Britannia securing its spot in the Louis Vuitton Cup Final

As INEOS Britannia secures its spot in the Louis Vuitton Cup Final, it moves one step closer to being the first British team to win the America’s Cup. Sir Ben Ainslie reports back live from the action.

 In the final, we will face our great rivals Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli (Italy) who beat New York Yacht Club American Magic (USA) in their semi-final match.

In our semi final, we faced the Swiss Team Alinghi Red Bull Racing, having won the right to choose our opponent after finishing top of the Round Robin stage of the Louis Vuitton challenger selection series. At the Round Robin first stage of the competition, the French Team Orient Express Racing were eliminated from the event, which was brutal to see knowing all the efforts the teams have put in over the last three years to be able to compete.

It definitely wasn’t a straightforward decision to choose Alinghi. Every team had their strengths and weaknesses, especially in different conditions. So the forecast for the Semi-Final period was a really important factor in our decision.

We kicked off the Louis Vuitton Cup Semi-Final with four back-to-back wins and each one with significant winning distances. However, the America’s Cup is never straightforward and a fickle breeze came into play which, combined with some poor performance on the water, meant the Swiss were able to claw back 2 wins. Steady heads were needed and we were able to come back fighting in the seventh race to bank the all-important fifth win, in turn ending Alinghi’s America’s Cup journey.

It was great to get our place in the final, but I can assure you no one was getting carried away at INEOS Britannia. Yes, we made some encouraging gains but if we are going to go all the way and win the America’s Cup, we are going to have to find the same again and then some.

The manner in which we improved through the Round Robins was very encouraging and that continued in the semi finals. It felt as if we made really some good gains, with the set-up of a boat, with how we're sailing it. We have got some real momentum now and that is so key in sport. Momentum and belief. You can sense it when you walk through the base. Everyone can see and feel the progress we are making and the positivity rubs off on you. When you are working as hard as our guys are, both here in Spain and back in the UK in Brackley, you need that.

In the early stages of the regatta, we were struggling a bit upwind, and we had work to do in our manoeuvres to be on the same level as Emirates Team New Zealand, Luna Rossa and American Magic. But I was comfortable that we had designed an ultra-aggressive boat to try to win this America’s Cup, and I felt we had lots of headroom and that it was up to us now to unlock that potential. I feel as if we are starting to prove it now.

We have definitely made some big gains in the last month and I’m so proud of how focused everyone remained, despite the doubts that were swirling around us. Not once did I see anyone’s head drop. Everyone kept doing what they were doing, stuck to the process, kept working hard.

Have we ticked all the boxes? No. We still need to find a lot more performance. And we can definitely cut down on the errors. On the whole, though, I’m happy with how we are progressing as a sailing team. From my relationship with my co-helm Dylan Fletcher, which is improving all the time, to our brilliant trimmers Leigh McMillan and Bleddyn Mon, to our cyclor group who have worked tirelessly.

We are definitely improving. and, this is a development game. We need to develop faster than everyone else. We will just get our heads down and keep working hard, keep trying to build that momentum as we enter the final against the Italians.

We are two pretty evenly matched teams, so it’s going to be a really amazing final, the beauty of this sport is that there are so many factors involved, from the human elements with manoeuvrers and pre-start tactics to the technology with the design and engineering, as well as the weather – that's the complexity of this competition and that’s why we love it. Conditions are tricky and changeable here, we’ve all seen that, so Mother Nature and the Italians – that's what we are up against.