Spithill, Oracle get swagger back with first win

Skipper Jimmy Spithill has his swagger back, meaning it’s game on in the America’s Cup on the Great Sound.

Spithill skippered twotime defending champion Oracle Team USA to its first victory of the regatta, taking a thriller in Race 6 to earn a split Saturday and slow the momentum of Emirates Team New Zealand.

It’s no matter to Spithill that Oracle merely cut Team New Zealand’s lead in the first-to-seven regatta to 4-1. Team New Zealand has won five races but began with a negative point because Oracle won the qualifiers.

Until the sixth race, the powerhouse American squad, owned by software tycoon Larry Ellison and crewed mostly by Australians, had been humbled by the underfunded but crafty Kiwis and their fast 50-foot, foiling catamaran helmed by 26-year-old America’s Cup rookie Peter Burling.

But Spithill’s been here before. In 2013, Oracle trailed Team New Zealand 8-1 on San Francisco Bay before winning eight straight races to complete one of the greatest comebacks in sports.

Not only did Oracle make its boat faster during a fiveday break in racing, but Spithill, who was a pretty fair boxer during his youth in Australia, regained his edge as a master at mind games.

Spithill said Oracle had seen the Kiwis taking a few days off during the week while the Oracle boys sailed every day — Spithill injured his right wrist when he took a tumble on board Friday — and their shore team worked long hours at night. He mentioned the San Francisco comeback. He said he feels the Kiwis have been on the favorable end of “a few soft penalties” by the umpires.

“Now we’ve got confidence,” the 37-year-old Spithill said. “Everyone on the team has just been going full noise the whole week. We’ve seen these guys taking days off. That’s good. I love seeing that.”

Oracle’s boat clearly was faster than the opening weekend wipeout, when the Kiwis won four straight races by margins from 30 to 88 seconds.

But Oracle is still making mistakes, which Spithill acknowledged. It was penalized twice and had a costly maneuver in the first race, allowing the Kiwis to speed off to a victory of 2:04, the biggest in the match.

Oracle came back and won Race 6 by 11 seconds, the closest margin so far.

“We know we can do this,” Spithill said. “We’ve been there before. The most important thing I remember from San Francisco was getting a win on the board. That was the key thing That’s why today was very, very important. You see the team’s pumped up now. They’re ready to get to work.”