ACWS SF: Come from Behind Victory
Confirms Spithill's Dominance
Final Fleet Race Features Surprise Leaders and a
Familiar Winner
October 7, 2012
At the start, James Spithill on Oracle4 was at the back of the fleet.
The story was different at the finish.
Photo:©2012 Gilles Martin-Raget
America’s Cup World Series San Francisco, Sunday,
October 7
Final Day: Fleet Races 7
Only 24 points separated the top five teams in the America’s Cup World Series fleet racing standings going into the last day of ACWS San Francisco, and with 40 points going to the winner on Super Sunday, the final fleet race of 2012 promised to be a great show. In the end it was Oracle Team USA Spithill taking the day’s victory to complete the weekend sweep, adding the fleet racing title to yesterday’s match racing championship.
With the backdrop of Fleet Week on San Francisco
Bay, the 11-boat field lined up under sunny skies, sandwiched in
between exhibitions by the Blue Angels over the city skyline. The
pre-start proved to be the undoing of regatta leader J.P. Morgan/Ben
Ainslie racing. The team copped a penalty in the starting box that
put them behind at the start. Artemis Racing Red, Oracle Team USA
Coutts and Team Korea led the field around the first mark, with Nathan
Outteridge at the helm of Artemis Racing Red taking the early lead.
France’s Energy Team stormed up into second place, but lost the
position when they took a penalty for jamming inside of Korea at the
second gate.
Dressing ship for the festival weekend. Photo:©2012 Gilles
Martin-Raget
Meanwhile, in the back of the field, Ainslie battled Emirates Team New Zealand, who had been in third position at day’s start, the two fighting over sixth place, not the spot in which either team had planned to find themselves.
The surging Team Korea, with 21-year-old Peter Burling taking over for Outteridge following the Aussie’s move to Artemis Racing, crossed ahead of Outteridge on Artemis Red to take over first place on the third leg. Outteridge was able to return the favor, rolling over the top of Burling, with Oracle Team USA Coutts passing the Korean team as well. But all the while, a familiar face was sneaking up from behind. Oracle Team USA Spithill, with wing frames repaired after yesterday’s dramatic capsize, was suddenly in fourth position.
The veteran Coutts surged ahead of Artemis Racing
Red on the leg and held a tight starboard advantage over them at the
gate, forcing the tacking Outteridge into a penalty and opening the
door for teammate Spithill -- a move he may have regretted, as Spithill
split around Gate Four, gained the starboard tack advantage and
charged into the lead on leg five. At the final mark, it was Oracle
teammates Spithill and Coutts leading the week’s main fleet racing
protagonists -- Terry Hutchinson’s Artemis Racing White and Ben Ainslie
-- as the field headed for the final gun. With a victory for himself
and a fourth place for J.P. Morgan/BAR, Spithill added the fleet
racing title to the match racing championship he’d taken on Saturday.
Spithill and Ainslie tied on points, but the final race win gave
Spithill the victory. Spithill also won the fleet racing standings in
the August ACWS regatta in San Francisco.
Post-race refreshments were served. Photo:©2012 Gilles Martin-Raget
“A smart man once told me that it’s not how you start the race, but how you finish the race,” said Spithill, smiling. “This team has been amazing. We had the capsize yesterday and it didn’t faze them, they bounced back for the match racing. We were dead last off the start line and again, they weren’t fazed, they kept grinding themselves harder and harder. It was fantastic to watch it in action.
“But the level of competition is so high out there. We looked at the points and we knew we had to win the race. We knew that if Ben got fourth or worse we could take it. But we’re so stoked – this is the second time we’ve been able to pull off the double and we’re still the only team to do it.”
Ainslie was disappointed to lose the top spot, but happy with the positive turnaround the team has experienced since his first ACWS regatta in August, when the team finished next to last in the standings.
“We didn’t have a very good start in today’s race,” explained Ainslie. “We tried to get into a gap that wasn’t really there and got a penalty. But I don’t think that was necessarily the race. Jimmy also had a bad start and they showed really well to pull through. I really think the first upwind leg was the biggest issue. We got boxed into a corner, lost a lot of ground to the rest of the fleet and had a lot of catching up to do. But thankfully we did that. We would have loved to have won, but I’m happy with the way the week’s gone.
“But it is rewarding, to start at the bottom and work your way up. Often, that is more rewarding than the winning side of it. We’re enjoying it at the moment but it’s important to keep pushing and try to get better.”
Hutchinson focused on the positives for Artemis
Racing after the event, happy to have tactician Iain Percy back on the
boat after Percy earned a silver medal in the London Olympics. The
difference in the team’s fleet racing show - sixth in the August
regatta with no victories and third today and a win in race four –
Hutchinson attributes to the information and presence Percy brings to
the boat.
Photo:©2012 Gilles Martin-Raget
“I’m most proud of the fact that barring the first race, we were top three the entire rest of the regatta,” noted Hutchinson. “This event has been a long time coming. Part of the program was in a holding pattern, waiting for Percy to get done with the Olympics, and I can’t say enough about the effort that was put forward by the entire team leading up to these regattas. We’d always had ourselves in a funny configuration on board, so we decided last year that if we compromise anything, compromise the fleet racing and focus on the match racing, which we did very good work at. We were missing that extra bit of feedback on board. So to have Iain on board to paint the picture, so that when we got into critical decision making we could make the correct decision, was key.”
Coutts had his share of misfortune this week including losing the Match Racing semi-final when he missed the final mark, but felt good about the final race of the week.
“I looked at the videos last night and changed some things,” said Coutts. “We got to the line earlier and positioned the boat a little differently. We got on into a real nice position early on and that set up the flow through the last minute. Jimmy was going a little faster through the water than us, which was probably a combination of a lot of things, but it was disappointing for us.”
The America’s Cup World Series will reconvene in
Italy for two one regatta in 2013: Venice, April 16-21; and Naples,
April 16-21 May
14-19. The Louis Vuitton Cup and the America’s Cup will take place in San Francisco from July
4 to September 22, 2013.
--Diane Swintal for CupInfo/©2012 CupInfo.com
Links of interest:
See ACWS Schedule
See 2013
Louis Vuitton Cup/America's Cup Schedule