American Magic wins both races in Day 4’s semi-finals! Day 5 ends on a sad note.

According to the America’s Cup summary: The Louis Vuitton Cup semi-final races take centre-stage this afternoon with, once again, Alinghi Red Bull Racing and NYYC American Magic standing on the precipice of elimination and with no margin for error. For INEOS Britannia and Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli the race is on! And Day 4 races began.

What great news. Alinghi wins the first race against INEOS.

Alinghi looked great winning race 1 today but then lost the second race to INEOS Britannia. Sadly, the Swiss have been eliminated.

INEOS now enters the Louis Vuitton Cup Final. This is the second consecutive time they have made the Challenger Selection Series Final, the first ‘Louis Vuitton’ Cup Final since 1983.

Luna Rossa vs American Magic. In its first race, the winds fell below 6knots and that worked in the Americans’ favor as American Magic wins the first race. The second race was really tight, the lead going back and forth until Luna Rossa suffered a gear failure abruptly ending the race for them. It was a victory for American Magic. Score now is Luna Rossa 4, American Magic 3.

Tom Slingsby, helmsman of NYYC American Magic, commented “Obviously, it’s never the way you want to win, but by the same token, we were out there giving out our best as well – so you don’t want to discredit the work of our team. Our thoughts are with Luna Rossa – it sucks to lose a race like that – but look, they have still got the lead, and they can come out tomorrow and finish it off – or we can get out there and win.” We’ll see what happens today.

DAY 5

now Alas, American Magic lost to Luna Rossa today and is eliminated, abandoning its 2024 dream of bringing the Cup back home. Luna Rosa now enters the Final against INEOS Brittania.

What’s Next? The Final for tDefenderhe Louis Vuitton Cup runs Sept 26-Oct 7. The winner of the Louis Vuitton Cup is the first team to score five points to become the Challenger and will then face Defender Emirates Team New Zealand in the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup. Racing starts at 2.00 pm (14:00 CET on race day.

American Magic photo/Ian Roman; Luna Rossa photo/AP