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James Spithill’s Oracle beat defending Swiss champion Alinghi on Sunday in the second race of the best-of-three series of the 33rd America’s Cup to claim sailing’s oldest and most prestigious trophy.
Oracle’s wing-sailed trimaran crossed the finish line of the race – a 39-mile triangle off the Spanish port of Valencia – 5min 26sec ahead of Alinghi’s catamaran, becoming the first US team to win the Cup in 18 years.
It was steered by Australian skipper Spithill, who at 30 is sailing in his fourth America’s Cup.
“The boys are just absolutely lit up,” Spithill said.
The Swiss side dominated for most of the first 13-mile leg of the race despite getting a penalty for being outside of the start box when the signal to start the match went off.
But Oracle led Alinghi around the top mark by 28 seconds after the Swiss ceded the inside position to its trimaran, whose solid vertical wingspan of 68 metres is more than twice the length of the wing of a Boeing 747.
Powered by its wing-sail, Oracle extended its lead over Alinghi over the next two legs, clocking a speed of 33 knots at one point with its owner Larry Ellison onboard in the afterguard position as a late addition to the crew.
Ellison was not on board the trimaran on Friday when Oracle emerged as the favourite to win the trophy after it won the first race — a 40-nautical-mile windward-leeward course — by a comfortable margin of 15:28 minutes.
It was the biggest winning margin since the 27th edition of the America’s Cup in 1988 when the US side Stars & Stripes’ catamaran defeated New Zealand side KZ1’s monohull.
“The wing seems to be quite a weapon,” Alinghi boss Ernesto Bertarelli, who steered his side’s catamaran during both races, said after the opener.
Unlike with a traditional soft sail, a hard wing sail allows the crew to control the shape of the sail to a very precise degree which can be a big advantage with unstable winds like those experienced in Valencia.
The technology used to build Oracle’s towering wing sail is not new.
The Stars & Stripes’ catamaran which defeated New Zealand’s KZ1 monohull at the 1988 America’s Cup had a similar but solid wing at 33 metres in height, less than half the size of Oracle’s.
A US team has not won the America’s Cup since 1992 when America3 as a defender beat Italian side Il Moro 4-1 in San Diego.
The US failed to defend the trophy in 1995 when they faced Black Magic of New Zealand which was helmed by Russell Coutts, who served as Oracle’s CEO and afterguard this time around.
The 33rd America’s Cup got off the a rough start with the opener postponed on Monday and Wednesday due to unfavourable sailing conditions, leading to renewed debate over the wisdom of holding the event in Valencia in February.
The event was held in a northern hemisphere winter for the first time this year, one of the results of the lengthy legal battle between Oracle and Alinghi that also caused the competition postponed by a year until 2010.
The last America’s Cup — which featured smaller single-hulled boats on shorter courses — was held in Valencia in July 2007 when summertime Mediterranean breezes are stronger and more consistent.
This was the first time multihulls have sailed against each other in the 159-year history of the America’s Cup.
The two entries were also the biggest, fastest and most expensive entries in the trophy’s history.
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