Entering the Venice America’s Cup World Series with the main aim to keep his crew’s position atop the leaderboard for the 2011-12 season championship, ORACLE TEAM USA skipper Jimmy Spithill managed to turn their 1 point advantage over Emirates Team New Zealand at the beginning of the race to 4 points at the end.
ORACLE TEAM USA on the podium Photo: Guilain GRENIER/ORACLE TEAM USA
Spithill and crew John Kostecki, Kyle Langford, Joe Newton and Brad Webb finished second in the fleet racing, to a jubilant Loïck Peyron and Energy Team, and third in the match racing – the only crew to place on the podium in both disciplines – and now has 84 points with the season finale in Newport, RI, looming in one month. The crew is second in the match racing standings with 38 points (Artemis Racing, 43 points) and leads the fleet racing with 46 points.
“That tastes very, very good,” Spithill said. “We always wanted to go into last event having a shot at winning, and we helped ourselves today. It’s still open going into Newport, but we have a good team behind us and a fantastic shore team. We’ll come out fighting and are looking forward to Newport.”
2011-12 America’s Cup World Series Overall Standings
Team (Country) Match – Fleet — Total
1. ORACLE TEAM USA SPITHILL (USA) 38 – 46 — 84
2. Emirates Team New Zealand (NZL) 36 – 44 — 80
3. Artemis Racing (SWE) 43 – 28 — 71
4. Energy Team (FRA) 32 – 33 — 65
5. Team Korea (KOR) 30 – 26 — 56
6. ORACLE TEAM USA BUNDOCK (USA) 29 – 24 — 53
7. Luna Rossa Piranha 18 – 16 — 34
8. China Team (CHN) 15 – 16 — 31
9. Luna Rossa Swordfish 11 – 10 — 21
(After five of six scheduled events)
