Oracle takes America's Cup in comeback for the ages
Tom FitzGerald
Updated 11:48 pm, Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison celebrates with his Oracle Team USA won Race 19 of the America's Cup Finals to take the America's Cup trophy on Wednesday, September 25, 2013 in San Francisco, Calif. Photo: Beck Diefenbach, Special To The Chronicle
No oracle could have foreseen this.
Oracle Team USA completed its miracle comeback Wednesday and retained the America's Cup in a regatta that carved a place in the San Francisco pantheon of unforgettable sporting events.
Twice down by seven wins, Larry Ellison's team rallied to win 9-8 in a 19-day marathon that was the longest final series in the Cup's 162-year history. And probably the most thrilling.
The final race of the 34th America's Cup brought three more lead changes to a series that was full of them, but skipper Jimmy Spithill's catamaran simply had too much speed for Emirates Team New Zealand and won by 44 seconds.
A roaring, flag-waving crowd greeted the crew after its eighth straight win. It secured each one knowing that a single mistake could mean the Cup was lost.
Ellison hopped on board and told his sailors, "Do you guys know what you just did? You won the America's Cup!"
Spithill, a feisty 34-year-old Australian, passed bouquets to his teammates moments after the race.
"When you've got a team like this around you, they can make you look great," he said. "They did all that today and in the whole series. I'm just so proud of the boys. They were looking down the barrel of a gun, and what do these guys do? They don't even flinch. It's a fantastic team."
At a news conference, Ellison - making his first public appearance of the regatta - saidRussell Coutts, the team's chief executive, was instrumental in the changes that helped Oracle recover from deficits of 6-to-minus-1 and 8-1.
"A lot of his ideas were used to mode that boat and speed it up," Ellison said. "He's never lost in the America's Cup - not a bad record."
Coutts declined to take part in the news conference, Ellison said, because he wanted the limelight to be on Spithill, who was joined by tactician Ben Ainslie and strategist/grinderTom Slingsby. The latter two provided valuable counsel to Spithill after Ainslie replaced Bay Area native John Kostecki when Oracle lost four of the first five races.
Ainslie paused during the lighthearted news conference to remember his British countryman, Andrew "Bart" Simpson, who died May 9 when Artemis Racing capsized, pinning him underneath the wreckage.
"He would have loved this competition," Ainslie said. "He would have thought the racing today was amazing. That's what he lived for."
Simpson's death was a severe emotional blow to everyone connected with the regatta, Ellison said. "These boats were meant to be extreme, but they certainly weren't meant to be life-threatening."
The regatta "has changed sailing forever," Ellison said. "If a bunch of kids watching this regatta on television was inspired, and they go out and start racing lasers, I'm a happy guy."
Ellison said he hopes the next Cup regatta will be in San Francisco after "the most magnificent spectacle I've ever seen on the water," but said he'd have to work out an arrangement with city officials. He has received an official notification from a challenger of record, he said, but wouldn't disclose which team it was.
When the Kiwis' lead reached 8-1 a week earlier, Ellison said Spithill told him, "You know what 8-1 is? Eight-and-1 is motivating."
The race didn't start well for Oracle. It lost the start and dropped its bows into the water with a big splash as the Kiwis zipped around the first gate with a seven-second lead.
The Kiwis had a 65-meter lead going into the second gate, but after three lead changes on the upwind leg, Oracle had the lead for good. In the downwind fourth leg, its lead reached nearly 700 meters.
The defender had been just one win from elimination for a week. It won 10 of the last 12 races to retain the oldest trophy in international sports.
It actually won 11 races to the Kiwis' eight but started two races in the hole because of a penalty levied by an international jury for a cheating scandal in the America's Cup World Series, a two-year warm-up series
.
.
