Italy’s finest

If he isn’t already, Francesco Bruni is about to become one of the world’s best-known sailors. 

Son of the Sicilian sailmaking dynasty, Bruni holds the rare accolade of having been to the Olympics three times in three different boats. This started with the Laser in Atlanta in 1996 before moving on to the 49er in Sydney and the Star for Athens in 2004. In larger keelboats he has made his mark in match racing where he finished runner-up in the 2011 World Championship and claimed the Argo Group Gold Cup in Bermuda in 2013, while in fleet racing he has held seven World Championship titles including the Melges 24 and TP52. 

 The America’s Cup is where Bruni has spent most of his sailing career. After three and half Cups already under his belt with Luna Rossa, starting with their second campaign for Auckland in 2003, Bruni was tactician for skipper Chris Draper aboard the Italian flying catamaran in San Francisco in 2013. He was promoted to skipper of Luna Rossa for the 35^th America’s Cup, until Team Principal Patrizio Bertelli abruptly cancelled the campaign mid-cycle - Bruni was subsequently recruited by Swedish challenger, Artemis Racing. However for this, the 36^th America’s Cup in New Zealand, scheduled for 2021, Bruni will be joint skipper with former Oracle helm Jimmy Spithill (who prior to his decade long stint with Larry Ellison’s team helmed Luna Rossa into the Louis Vuitton Cup finals in Valencia in 2007). 

 Bruni and crew Nando Colaninno joined Star Sailors League Final in Nassau for the first time last December, finishing 10^th. “I was invited a couple of times before, but I couldn’t make due to other commitments,” he recalls. “It is a great event - I really enjoyed it. The organisation is very nice and it is in a great location.”

However compared to some of the sailors he was facing, Bruni’s absence from the former Olympic keelboat had been a longer one – at least ten years, since he had made a short unsuccessful attempt to represent Italy in Beijing 2008. “It was great to be back, to see old friends and to have that old feeling on a very tactical and technical boat.”

Stepping into the Star in December also came as a shock as over the last few years, Bruni has mostly been sailing state of the art lightweight foiling boats that fly over the water rather than through it. “The Star is definitely different, but I have regularly been sailing keelboats like the RC44 and TP52. The Star is just smaller.”

 Techniques for racing the Star have also developed markedly since Athens. “Free pumping! Back when I was sailing the Star the downwind was the relaxing part, where you could relax your legs after hiking upwind. Now downwind is also hard - so it is like doing a marathon!”

He and Nando Colaninno were also well below maximum weight. “In fact we sailed very well in light wind when in three or four races and were in the top three. But as soon as the breeze came up, we were struggling.” 

Bruni thinks the concept of the Star Sailors League – where all of the ‘stars of the sailing’ (who may or may not be Starboat sailors), from across our diverse sport, can all get to race on an equal footing. “Obviously all of the Star specialists have a bit of an advantage but Goodie [Paul Goodison] won the last edition and he was definitely a newcomer in the class.”

Bruni is also a big fan of the ‘League’ as well. While this is getting off the ground with the cumulative events in the Star class, results from the Finn, Snipe and Soling classes are joining the ranking. The aim is to include all of the Olympic classes and from there – who knows? “A ranking where you can earn points from any class you sail in with the aim getting into the Final - I really like that concept,” he says. 

 This year Bruni is back to focussing on the next America’s Cup. Luna Rossa’s radical new AC75 won’t be launched until early summer 2019 and in the meantime he will helm their TP52 when the 52 Super Series gets underway in Croatia towards the end of May. “That is a very competitive class and it will be great for our team to do that series. Obviously the boat is not the same as the AC75, but at the moment it is the most competitive circuit and it is a great exercise for team building.” In this they will line up with other AC crews, from Land Rover BAR and Quantum Racing as well as Emirates Team New Zealand. 

Come the Cup Bruni and Spithill will share helming duties, to ensure there is redundancy in their program and if his Australian counterpart ends up on the wheel then Bruni will call tactics. 

As a sailmaker, now part of Doyle in Italy, Bruni is keen on the AC75’s new double skin mainsail, that will be like a wing you can easily drop. “That will be something potentially very interesting for the whole sailing world. As always it is great that the America’s Cup is leading the way and is pushing forward new ideas. Then there’s obviously the heavy foils, with the windward foil out of the water to give you righting moment – the platform looks like a Moth, because you will be foiling on two foils, one rudder and a leeward foil, although it is very different in scale and weight.” 

Moths remain very much central to Bruni’s sailing. Most recently he posted probably his best ever dinghy result, finishing second to Star Sailor’s League winner Paul Goodison, in Bermuda at the Bacardi Moth World Championship. “I am one of the oldest guys in the class and I was hoping for a top five result and light winds. Instead the average wind speed was 18-20 knots, so to finish second and considering that we only had six races, it was a dream - I am very pleased.”

So will we see Bruni back at the Star Sailor’s League Final in the Bahamas this year? “Obviously the priority at the moment is the America’s Cup – to build-up a strong team and there is not a lot of time left when you do those programs. If it happens to be at a convenient time, I would love to do it.”