Race Report and Results: America's Cup World Series Cascais
Qualifying - Day 8 - Match Race Championship Finals
August 13, 2011
Match Racing Championship:
Quarterfinals, Semifinals, and Final
Photo:©2011 Guilain Grenier/Oracle
Racing
Oracle4 skippered by James Spithill wins the ACWS Cascais Match Racing Championship, beating ETNZ 2-0.
Saturday's
Results:
Match Racing Championship
A big upset for Korea, beating
Russell Coutts and Oracle5 in the quarterfinal, as the White Tiger
advanced along with Artemis to the semifinals. The Swedes
withdrew against Oracle4 (Spithill) after a gennaker misfire, while
ETNZ beat Korea, setting up an Aussie-Kiwi Final best-of-three match
with Dean Barker facing James Spithill. The multihull wizard
from Oz prevailed with Oracle4 winning the Cascais Match Racing
championship 2-0.
Quarterfinal:
2 Matches, 1 Race each.
QF1: Artemis beats Energy
QF2: Korea beats Oracle5 (Coutts), delta :38
The two quarterfinal matches will run with starts staggered by 5
minutes.
Semifinals:
2 Matches, 1 Race each.
Start 1 at 35 minutes past.
Oracle4 (Spithill) beats Artemis after the Swedes withdraw following a
gennaker drop into the water.
ETNZ beats Korea, delta :40.
Artemis beat Energy Team in the
quarterfinal, only to be undone by gennaker problems against Oracle
(Spithill) in their semifinal match. Photo:©2011
Gilles Martin-Raget/americascup.com
Korea knocked Russell Coutts and Oracle 5 out of the quarterfinals,
but lost to ETNZ in the semis.
Photo:©2011
Gilles Martin-Raget/americascup.com
Final Match:
Best of 3 Race Series.
Semifinal Winners Oracle (Spithill) and ETNZ
First start at 4:30 pm Cascais time.
Race 1: Oracle beats ETNZ.
Race 2: Oracle beats ETNZ to win the match 2-0, becoming the Match
Racing Champion for the America's Cup World Series in Cascais!
See Bracket Format and Qualifying Results
Quotes of
the Day:
Russell Coutts, Skipper, Oracle5, who was eliminated by Team
Korea: "We just haven’t had a great regatta tactically. It’s tough,
you know. Team Korea sailed a very, very nice race and got some good
shifts."
"For quite of few of us it’s a matter of experience in these boats. Not many of us on our boat have raced in multihulls in earnest. We have done a lot of testing miles, particularly in windy San Francisco conditions. In the light, shifty conditions we haven’t really done much. None of us on our boat have done the Extreme 40 circuit and any serious multihull racing. I think that shows. Sometimes we have flashes of sailing well; other times sailing less well."
Chris Draper, Skipper, Team
Korea:
"We were very pleased to have beaten Russell Coutts, so it was a bit
difficult to control our emotions, but we’re over the moon.”
Terry Hutchinson, Skipper, Artemis Racing: “We had a little bit of an issue in which the gennaker came down and it was quickly going to start doing a lot of damage to the boat so we took the decision of retire and protect the asset,” Hutchinson explained. “But we did a lot of things really, really, well.”
James Spithill, Skipper, Oracle4: “I feel like we’ve ramped up as we’ve gone through the week,” Spithill said, after the victory. “We’ve peaked at the right time. I’m very happy. It feels fantastic.”