{"id":438355,"date":"2026-05-21T12:55:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T12:55:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/438355\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T12:55:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T12:55:14","slug":"americas-cup-serena-woodalls-road-to-racing-with-team-nz-in-first-preliminary-regatta-on-the-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/438355\/","title":{"rendered":"America\u2019s Cup: Serena Woodall\u2019s road to racing with Team NZ in first preliminary regatta \u2013 On The Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI initially just came back for three weeks for the first internship<\/a> and then kind of never left,\u201d she tells the Herald.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was cool to get a good summer in at home. It\u2019s been probably four or five years since I\u2019ve spent that long in New Zealand in one go. So yeah, really special to be back home for a while, but also nice to get back into the Europe summer and the Europe racing scene over here at the moment.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

For the past two years, Woodall has been living in Mallorca, Spain, working on a J-Class yacht. It was a necessary move as she sought more opportunities in the sport.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be based there, I had to get a fulltime job, so I started working on a J-Class, which is a much bigger boat. We raced on those with 30 crew and yeah, obviously a completely different style of racing, but I think the teamwork that goes on in one of those boats when the loads are so big and there\u2019s so many people on board and so many moving parts, working in a team of that size was super cool and I think definitely taught me some key fundamental skills that I could bring into this campaign,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been super cool and quite a cool crossover.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stepping on to the Team NZ AC40 in a trimming role is the latest step in a varied sailing career for Woodall, who did not enter the sport through the traditional Olympic classes.<\/p>\n

Instead, she went into the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron\u2019s youth training programme for three years, where she said the main focus was match racing and \u201cbigger-boat sailing\u201d.<\/p>\n

From there, she moved into competing in the Women\u2019s Match Racing World Tour as part of the 2.0 Racing and Edge Women\u2019s Match teams.<\/p>\n

Looking to broaden her horizons in foiling classes, Woodall has sailed in the 69F series, a class of three-person foiling monohulls, and the ETF26 series,<\/a> which is contested on foiling catamarans.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith having the Women\u2019s and the Youth America\u2019s Cup, it kind of just opens up that other pathway and you know, there is something else to the sport at such a high level that\u2019s not the Olympic pathway and you can kind of make it your own and how you get there,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely a really cool opportunity for young people coming up. There\u2019s something else to strive for and something else to aim for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Woodall was informed by Team NZ Cup veteran Andy Maloney that she would be sailing on the team\u2019s second AC40 in Cagliari, in a crew that included Erica Dawson and Jake Pye in the helming roles and Josh Armit in the other trimming position.<\/p>\n

At 24, Woodall is eligible to sail in the Youth, Women\u2019s and main America\u2019s Cup regattas, and she said this weekend\u2019s event was a good chance to perform in a race setting.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re here to do as well as we can. [There\u2019s] definitely a big underdog mentality going on with our team I think, but it\u2019ll be awesome to get out there racing with other boats and yeah, looking forward to see how we go.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, it would be epic to get a good result here, but aside from that, I think the learning that we\u2019re going to get from this event, A, from time on the water and then B, time on the water in a bigger fleet and in a fleet with the sailors of such calibre.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe learning is just going to be awesome and I think we\u2019ll be able to take that forward through the rest of this campaign, whether that\u2019s into the Youth America\u2019s Cup or into the Women\u2019s America\u2019s Cup, and really try to share our learnings with the wider group going forward and create some key pieces of information that we can take out throughout the campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n

America\u2019s Cup preliminary regatta<\/p>\n

Cagliari, Sardinia. May 22-26 from 1am (NZT).<\/p>\n

Friday: Practice racing.<\/p>\n

Saturday: Up to three fleet races.<\/p>\n

Sunday: Up to three fleet races.<\/p>\n

Monday: Up to two fleet races and the final two-boat match race.<\/p>\n

Christopher Reive<\/a> joined the Herald sports team in 2017, bringing the same versatility to his coverage as he does to his sports viewing habits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI initially just came back for three weeks for the first internship and then kind of never left,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[28174,10542,1888,1345,78,16841,685,4507,111,43,139,69,90,2847,58363,3512,41140,12971,1314,18217,7187,223,1529,61,810,4518,1316,102,224122,224121,379,80],"class_list":["post-438355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-americas","tag-cup","tag-first","tag-home","tag-in","tag-intended","tag-last","tag-late","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-only","tag-preliminary","tag-racing","tag-regatta","tag-returned","tag-road","tag-serena","tag-team","tag-the","tag-three","tag-to","tag-up","tag-weeks","tag-when","tag-with","tag-woodall","tag-woodalls","tag-year","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}