The America’s Cup World Series are promoting the final day of the event as ‘Super Sunday’ – seemingly unable to come up with their own terminology or any original marketing material, they are borrowing from all kinds of other well established events. However unlike Cascais, where the AC45 boats cruised around the course, the final race in Plymouth was started in conditions that were so ‘extreme’ that the organisers chose to take the guest racers off the boats.
James (don’t call me Jimmy) Spithill showed that at the top of the wind range, time practicing makes all the difference, winning the fleet race from Emirates Team New Zealand and ‘stablemate’ Russell Coutts.
Spithill commented:
“I still think we had a bit left in the tank to be honest. The puffiness and change in direction made it challenging, but what a fun race!”
Coutts agreed that this was not really anywhere near the limit of the boats. Despite uttering an unending string of expletives as he completed the course, Coutts said that if you had your head out of the boat when the gusts came, then you were okay.
The promises of big wrecks and boat-breaking action were delivered on, with Energy Team capsizing before the start in a desperate effort to avoid Team Korea and then moments later there was a dramatic collision with Artemis Racing riding up over the back of Green Comm Racing, with the skipper Vasilij Zbogar falling off the back of the Spanish boat and suffering a minor injury to his hand. With their boat damaged in the collision, Green Comm retired without crossing the start line.
At the first mark China Team capsized but got up and running again. In fact when Artemis capsized later in the race, Charlie Ogletree’s Chinese team moved past and managed to cross the finish line 9 minutes and 54 seconds after the winner, just six seconds inside the finishing time limit.
The dumbing down of the sport means that the official press release records the speeds in kilometres. Perhaps this is to make the numbers look bigger, but it seems stupid in a world that was founded on marine heritage, where nautical language permeates everyday speech, that knots would be replaced by km/h.
The PR Spin Kings reported boats touching speeds in excess of 50km/h.
The crowds on Plymouth Hoe increased throughout the week, as the city embraced the World Series and the teams, but the weather meant that by the last day the crowds were not as big as they were in the opening weekend. Perhaps the novelty had worn off.
Crowds were significant insofar as you could see people lining the Hoe to watch. Some had even come specifically to watch the racing, but the traffic was PGFP (pretty good for Plymouth) and there were no parking problems. There were plenty of seats at restaurants in the Barbican and specially built marquees were empty. The biggest crowds were for the performers of the evening entertainment on the stage.
Councillor Vivien Pengelly said:
“It is estimated that over 115 000 people have lined the Hoe over the past week to see some of the most exciting racing to ever come to British waters. I have to take my hat off to all of the teams. Your skills are amazing. We’ve been thrilled to have you here.”
Proving that ACEA have a way to go to understand the long term value of fans, they did not publish the overall championship scores in the press release (perhaps because ORACLE is not winning), but here they are:
America’s Cup World Series – Overall Scores
- 1. Emirates Team New Zealand – 38
- 2. ORACLE Racing Spithill – 34
- 3. ORACLE Racing Coutts – 28
- 3. Artemis Racing – 28
- 4. Team Korea – 24
- 5. Aleph – 18
- 5. Energy Team – 18
- 6. Green Comm – 17
- 7. China – 13
