Ainslie plots Oracle Team USA’s amazing charge
THE extraordinary comeback of America’s Cup holders Oracle Team USA against Emirates New Zealand in San Francisco Bay is in large part down to the talent of Britain’s quadruple Olympic champion sailor Ben Ainslie.
The defenders on Tuesday levelled the score at 8-8 in yachting’s most prestigious and wellknown race, after trailing 8-1 a week ago and having been docked two points even before the duel on the water began.
September 12, the day of the sixth regatta, could go down in the annals of the 162-year event as the turning point of a dramatic and intense final, when Oracle replaced experienced American John Kostecki with Ainslie as team tactician.
The 49-year-old Kostecki, a 12time world champion, Olympic silver medallist in 1988 and who won the Volvo Ocean Race in 2001-02, paid for several major tactical errors in the first races against the New Zealanders.
Ainslie, 36, up to that point the helmsman of the second US AC72 catamaran, joined the number one boat’s skipper Jimmy Spithill and his Australian compatriot Tom Slingsby, who won Olympic gold last year in the Laser class.
The improvement in performances was not immediate — Oracle still lost two more races — but on September 14 during the eighth regatta, the Americans won the second race and repeated the feat the following day.
The “Ainslie effect” began to take hold. The bearded Ainslie, who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in January this year for his services to sailing in what he said was “the best day of (his) life”, began to appear alongside Spithill at news conferences.
At ease in front of the cameras and hugely popular, Ainslie took care to stress that Oracle’s performance was a team effort and that the boat’s transformation was in large part down to the improvements made by its architects and technicians. On board, Ainslie — who says on his website benainslie.com that his biggest goal is to win the America’s Cup — was everywhere, analysing the stretch of water and in constant dialogue with Slingsby and Spithill. “Really it is all about the tactics. Tom and Ben were really under a lot of pressure there a few times but kept their cool,” said Spithill on Sunday after Oracle’s fourth straight victory.
Ainslie, a gold medallist at the last four Olympics in the Finn and Laser classes and an 11-time world champion, undoubtedly improved communication between Oracle leaders on board the giant multihull. Stephen Barclay, executive director of the America’s Cup, recognised that the arrival of the well-known Ainslie in the Oracle cockpit had also helped “sell” the race abroad.