By Judith Krimski
A capacity crowd of 14 thousand sat in on the the final day of the America’s Cup Newport World Series. They weren’t disappointed because it played out in thrilling fashion. “It was really exciting,” commented David Gilman, a college student from Sharon MA, “The cats were so close to the shore and we saw some near crashes in the fleet race. We all wanted to see more racing.”
Russell Coutts, the “Old Bugger,” as James Spithill called him post racing, came away with the victory in the match racing finals. “You’re too young to know some of those tricks,” the 50-year-old Coutts shot back with a laugh. Earlier in the day Coutts showed his youthful Oracle counterpart how a seasoned match racer does it. With seconds to go before the start Coutts stalled Spithill with a well-timed luff. Pulling away at the start he took advantage of his lead, playing the shifts perfectly and keeping a good cover on his opponent. Coutts also fought hard in the fleet race but due to a penalty lost to Luna Rossa’s Chris Draper and company.
In the end Jimmy Spithill’s team came away with the overall championship trophy for the world series. Post racing Coutt’s had some encouraging words for Team Oracle’s progress to date. “Today just happened to work out for us. We got some nice breaks, but I wouldn’t give us too much credit for it,” Coutts said. “As a team, we’re really happy. Jimmy and his guys won the World Series and that’s what we came here to do… We’re always out there to win, we’re not there to just sail around the buoys – we want to win.”
The Newport event marks the end of the first season of AC World Series racing and follows previous events in Cascais (POR), Plymouth (UK), San Diego (USA), Naples and Venice (ITA). Regatta Director Iain Murray and his team have conducted 130 races over 30 days of racing in the six international venues. Over the time, only one day of races has been postponed due to weather.
American terry Hutchinson, Skipper for Artemis Racing, won the overall match racing trophy. “It’s a nice milestone for the team,” Hutchinson said, his mood tempered somewhat by a poor fleet race on Sunday. “But I think we have a lot of work to do. There are a lot of areas we can do better. But we have 14 months to do it and we’re looking forward to the challenge.”
Oracle has clearly shown they are the team to beat in this newfangled America’s Cup. “I’m pretty happy with the state of everything,” said tactician John Kostecki. “Most importantly the World Series seems a huge success. We’ve been through Europe and now here in the States. Each event has gotten better and better and San Francisco will be exciting too.”
ORACLE TEAM USA now heads home to its base at Pier 80 in San Francisco for the next four months with a full slate of activities on the schedule. The team’s first AC72 will begin sailing next month, and the first regatta of the 2012-13 America’s Cup World Series is scheduled Aug. 23-26. It’ll be the first time that America’s Cup racing will be featured on the Bay. “We’re looking forward to getting back home to San Francisco,” said Spithill. “We have some testing sessions coming up and the launch of the first AC72. That’s an exciting time. And when the ACWS kicks off again it’ll be another level of racing that we’ve seen. You’ll see more thrills and spills, and more teams. It’s exciting. I can’t wait to see the event back in our hometown.”
The 2012-2012 ACWS season visited six venues in four countries, and Coutts voiced satisfaction with the state of the game. But he knows that changes are needed to keep improving. “The America’s Cup World Series is good right now, but we have to take it to the next level and we’ll see some of that in San Francisco later this summer,” said Coutts.
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