America's Cup 2010:
BMW Oracle and GGYC Win: Quotes and Comments


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Final Race 2 Quotes and Comments
BMW Oracle wins by 5:28 - Golden Gate YC Wins America's Cup 2-0

Valencia, February 14, 2010



USA, Golden Gate YC's Challenger, winning the America's Cup in Race 2, Sunday.
Photo: ©2010
Gulain Grenier/BMW Oracle Racing


Ernesto Bertarelli:
The thing that comes to mind right now is that, over last 10 years, anyone who has ever come close to the Alinghi team understands what I feel now. There’s a unique warmth, a unique spirit, a unique friendship that ties any person who’s cheered for us or met the Alinghi team.

I’m proud of our team and what we have achieved over the last 10 years.

It’s not for me to decide the future of the America’s Cup anymore – I will wait and see what the future is going to bring us, where it is going to take us - then decide.

The best part is not actually having the silver trophy, the best thing is having a team which is successful and has a spirit. The greatest achievement of Alinghi was being the first European team to win the America’s Cup. These last two races, we were disadvantaged; we didn’t have a boat that was quite fast enough, but I think that with what we were given, we did our best and showed we were not going to lay down and give up and forfeit, we fought as hard as we could. We exit with our head high, proud of our achievements.

If anyone wants to try this, maybe they should study our path, what we did, and learn from it. There’s a few things I could have done differently, but overall, it’s a pretty good run, no regrets, really. I never thought we would do that well; even today, I thought our boat did good, they were tough condition, with well over a meter waves, and we pushed hard. We didn’t expect the wing to provide such an advantage. And I think for the first time in recent years we had the fastest possible boats racing each other and that’s good – why would you want to go slowly?

Brad Butterworth, Skipper, Alinghi:
I think both days were real races, but unfortunately, it’s just two races. I’d like to congratulate Oracle on the job they’ve done, designing and sailing their boat. It’s not an easy thing to change their boat, to remode it, to push it hard when they saw what we were coming up with. And I’d like to congratulate the guys in our group as well, they did a great job with the time constraint they had. The designers and builders did a great job to help us get to the point get to the stage where we could put our foot down and have a bit of a race.

But you could see there was a bit of a difference in the boats, but that’s yacht racing.

We wanted to get the right hand side of start line. We were a little bunched up by having the start called so late in day, we struggled to ping the ends of the line and then gybe around and get to our end, so we got a penalty for free. So we’re two for two. We wanted to gybe around but we couldn’t get to the starboard layline for the committee boat which is what we wanted because of the spectator boats that were there. We wanted to gybe back and sit up in front of Oracle, but they came back in with a bit of speed on and had to pick one way or the other. He picked to leeward of us, so we got what we wanted, which was to tack and start on port. There was a right shift that went our way and we had better pressure on that side anyway. We push the boat harder than we’d ever really pushed it. We were quite a way ahead, we thought, but it’s never over till it’s over. We thought he wasn’t on the layline so when we got to them we had a hard decision to make – if we’d been half a boat length ahead of them, we could have tack in front of them, but we didn’t quite have rights there, so we had to go above them and he snuck through.

We considered that we were a little bit disadvantaged that we couldn’t use the start box because of the spectator boats that were around there, with the set up, but in the end we talked about it and decided it didn’t have a bearing on the race and dropped it.

 

  Larry Ellison, BMW Oracle:
 “It was really tough on the first beat because they got the right hand side, did a bit of a split and we covered a little late.  They got some leverage, we hit the layline perfectly, just dipped him, got underneath him, sailed in front of him, rounded the weather mark first, and sailed away on the reach.”

Jimmy Spithill, Skipper, BMW Oracle:
 "This is the best part, coming in to see your teammates, seeing how they react. The guys just put in so much work. It’s been such a really, really, hard campaign, so to come back in and share it with the rest of the team is just awesome.  Full credit to the engineers and boat builders and designers to get through those races with no issues at all. My hat is off to them. They won it for us. This is something I’ve dreamed about since I was a kid. I started 10 years ago – I thought it would never come."

Larry Ellison:
"I am so proud of this team, proud to be a part of this team – and I’m proud to bring the America’s Cup, after a long absence, back to the USA!"

On the Location for the Defense:
"I haven't made any decisions at all. We have to talk to the city of San Francisco -- this requires a lot of support, lots of support from the city to do America's Cup bases. We have to see what's available on the waterfront, since we have to develop bases for so many teams. We need the full cooperation of the city to do that."

Next Defense of the America's Cup:
"We do have a challenger of record, and one thing I'd like to assure everybody about the 34th  America's Cup is that there will be a completely independent jury, there will be completely independent umpires, it will be an independent group that manages the next America's Cup. It will be a level playing field for all competitors."

 


Coutts, Ellison, Kostecki, and Spithill raise the Cup!
Photo: ©2010
Gilles Martin-Raget/BMW Oracle Racing


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