Artemis races today..

Artemis Racing's problems have been more dramatic and tragic, but Luna Rossa Challenge has found tough sledding, too, in this America's Cup campaign.

It made a late entry in 2011 when the other teams already were well under way with their boat preparations. By their own account, the Italians were aiming for 2016 or '17, or whenever the next Cup regatta is. In American sports parlance, they intended to use this regatta as a rebuilding season.

They were trounced by Emirates Team New Zealand in the round-robin phase of the Louis Vuitton Cup challengers series. While the Kiwis cool their jets for the next two weeks, Luna Rossa climbs into the favorite's chair for a change when it duels with Artemis in the semifinals beginning Tuesday.
Very little has gone right for Luna Rossa in San Francisco. The latest problem was damage to its wing sail in practice a few days ago. Officials, however, said the boat is ready.

Artemis is making its first official appearance of the regatta. It skipped the round-robin as it built and outfitted a new boat after the May 9 capsizing in which crew member Andrew "Bart" Simpson died.
Its crew will have had only about 40 hours of practice on the boat when it races for the first time.
But Luna Rossa helmsman Chris Draper points out that, all told, Artemis didn't spend much less practice time on an AC72 than his team did. That's because the Italian team didn't enter the campaign until late 2011, about a year and half after the other challengers.

"When we started," Draper said, "Artemis had (rudder) wings built already" and was already hydrofoiling. "We didn't even have pen to paper for a boat. So we're in a much better situation than we thought we'd be."

Team owner Patrizio Bertelli wasn't going to enter the campaign until he decided that if his team was going to have a chance to win in the next Cup cycle - especially because of the switch to catamarans - it needed to use the San Francisco regatta to prepare.

To cut costs in what quickly became an extremely expensive effort for all the teams, Luna Rossa bought its boat design from the Kiwis.

Draper said there's another reason to be wary of Artemis besides its much earlier start.
"They've got a huge amount of talent on their team - from design (team) to shore (team) to obviously the sailing team," he said.

"That's still the situation," Draper said. "We will still treat them as if they are as good as anybody. We've got to bring our absolute 'A' game to the race course to do well."

In the past week, Luna Rossa has made some aerodynamic changes to the boat and put new tips on its daggerboards, among other changes.

Skipper Max Sirena said he doesn't look at the semifinals as a chance to vindicate his team after the drubbing by the Kiwis. "We raced against the best team in the world," he said. "I think they're way ahead compared to everyone else."

He wasn't leaving defender Oracle Team USA out of that equation.

All races start at 1:15 p.m. PDT
Friday/Saturday races will be shown on YouTube.com/Americascup following the telecast. Remaining races in semifinals will be seen live on YouTube/Americascup. In addition, all semifinal races will be shown live on Cozi TV.