Congrats Team Oracle for America's Cup Victory!

[mychetboy]

The best damn race I have ever seen. If you are unfamilar with the America's Cup, you owe it to yourself to checkout this last one. The official web site has re-broadcasts of the entire race.

Awesome!

[GernBlansten]

Insane comeback! It would be fun to find out what changes they made (rig/boat) back when they were down 8-1. Some SERIOUS upwind pace on Oracle. Nice to see some actual match racing mixed in too!

[Hafner32]

It was a great final race, has to go down as one of the greatest comebacks ever in sports history.

[Bartolomeo]

Very cool comeback!

[OZCUBAN]

Great stuff indeed

With an Aussie skipper and on the 30 th Aniversary of the our original Americas cup win when we rested the cup from the Americans in the 80's first to ever do so .

And how about the Kiwis this belongs on the greatest choke thread,a week ago 8-1 up to a loss

To all those involved enjoy

Cheers

[Warren]

Yes, another victory for the Aussies.

[frenchkiwi]

Yes, another victory for the Aussies.

More of an Antipodean victory using Ellison's money - Oracle team had 8 NZers, 6 Australians, 3 Dutch, 1 Briton, and 2 Americans, managed by the seemingly invincible bastard Russell Coutts (NZ) and skippered by James Spithill (Aus). The shore crew were a similar mix.

Halfway through, when they were having their asses handed to them, Coutts got a dozen of their boat builders to fly in from NZ and overhaul the boat in less than 48hours. They installed an automated foil stabilising system that they bought off Boeing (at least that's good US technology) which Team NZ (with their pitiful $100million budget) still had a sailor doing manually in real time. The estimate is that Ellison spent just under $1billion on his campaign.

Money and technology have always won the America's cup, much like Formula One. It's part of the fun and the miracle was that half of the races were actually sailing races with pretty similar boats (not the early races or the last ones). Oh and endless legal battles - i don't think anyone's too keen on that except for lawyers firms.

9-8 - great drama, great racing, i doubt we'll see that ever again. Pity the Louis Vuitton was such a waste of time with only 4 challengers who could afford AC72s. They need to use slightly cheaper boats.

[Ken Gargett]

More of an Antipodean victory using Ellison's money - Oracle team had 8 NZers, 6 Australians, 3 Dutch, 1 Briton, and 2 Americans, managed by the seemingly invincible bastard Russell Coutts (NZ) and skippered by James Spithill (Aus). The shore crew were a similar mix.

Halfway through, when they were having their asses handed to them, Coutts got a dozen of their boat builders to fly in from NZ and overhaul the boat in less than 48hours. They installed an automated foil stabilising system that they bought off Boeing (at least that's good US technology) which Team NZ (with their pitiful $100million budget) still had a sailor doing manually in real time. The estimate is that Ellison spent just under $1billion on his campaign.

Money and technology have always won the America's cup, much like Formula One. It's part of the fun and the miracle was that half of the races were actually sailing races with pretty similar boats (not the early races or the last ones). Oh and endless legal battles - i don't think anyone's too keen on that except for lawyers firms.

9-8 - great drama, great racing, i doubt we'll see that ever again. Pity the Louis Vuitton was such a waste of time with only 4 challengers who could afford AC72s. They need to use slightly cheaper boats.

may i take this opportunity to point out that, when australia won the cup in 1983 ending 132 years of dominance, that the winning boat had precisely no americans on board and nor did any australian sail against their own country. in this or, to my knowledge, any other america's cup race in history.

of course, i make no comment as to what this might imply in relation to national pride.

i understand the kiwi outrage at the late installation (actually, i can acknowledge it rather than understand it) but was it not completely within the rules? i saw all these kiwis interviewed all claiming oracle had cheated and that they didn't deserve it. yet my understanding of that was that it was completely legal. is that wrong? didn't the kiwis (and i confess my knowledge of the cup not what it could be so i may be wrong) come up with the catamaran idea which made the finals a farce one year? it was a brilliant use of the rules, even more so than here (one could argue the same re the underarm ball - my irritation with that has always been that it was simply unnecessary). again, am i missing something (i mean that seriously as i really don't follow it that closely)?

as for one side having more/better resources or money, again something i have seen endless kiwis bleating about recently, so what? should man city, chelsea etc be kicked out of the english premier league because they have more dosh than their competitors? the kiwi govt put in a lot of money, whereas i gather that the oracle team had no public money. personally, i had not realised that the kiwi economy was so strong that they don't have better things on which to spend it but none of my business. entirely up to the kiwi govt and voters but it does mean that the kiwis had massively more potential cash available but chose not to use it. and are now whinging about being outspent?

[frenchkiwi]

i understand the kiwi outrage at the late installation (actually, i can acknowledge it rather than understand it) but was it not completely within the rules?

No outrage about the late installation here but intrigue as to what it was - the technological race has always been the name of the game in AC. The unusual thing in this cup was Oracle setting it up to be the best of 9 races, normally it's a lot less, and it proved to be a very smart move as unlike the Bertarelli-Ellison showdown last time there was no challenger with bottomless pockets.

didn't the kiwis (and i confess my knowledge of the cup not what it could be so i may be wrong) come up with the catamaran idea which made the finals a farce one year?

Ha ha no that was an American... Dennis Conner in '87... bent the rules to bring out a catamaran against a monohull... like a jet plane against a hot air balloon... no contest

as for one side having more/better resources or money, again something i have seen endless kiwis bleating about recently, so what? the kiwi govt put in a lot of money, whereas i gather that the oracle team had no public money. and are now whinging about being outspent?

no that's just a fact of the America's Cup, when the host can draw on ten times the resources of the challenger, as in this case, it's generally game over. TNZ cobbled together a budget of $100mill from all the sponsors plastered all over the boat incl. $US 25million from NZ govt. Est.$1bn spent by Ellison. The surprise is that there was a good contest.

Kiwi yacht industry is happy they got far more money out of Ellison than they did out of Team NZ.

The thing is, nobody who enjoys the America's Cup wanted Ellison to win because of what he and other billionaires before him have done to kill the contest. If you look up the debacles of 2007 2010 and the Louis Vuitton debacle this year, you'll see why.

But who knows, maybe Ellison will see the light and put lower barriers to entry for the next one, return to the Deed's "contest between nations" definition that made Australia's 83 victory possible ... highly unlikely

[Ken Gargett]

wasn't suggesting yourself but there were some kiwis frothing about it.

and i knew someone did a catamaran.

personally, yacht racing bores me senseless. i always remember that the around week we won the thing, same time as allan border in a test match in the west indies, against malcolm marshall, joel garner and the rest of the great windies quicks, held on in the last over for a draw. he got 98 not out first innings and 100 not out in the second. our other ten batsmen totalled about 350 over the 2 innings. i remember listening to that last over to save the match. awesome courage. if you ever wanted a bloke to play for your life, border first, daylight second. bradman might feature.

but that meant 100 times more to me than winning some boat race.

i had a few mates who were selected to sail on the 83 winning boat but they turned them down. it would have meant 18 months of their life for which they were paid expenses and maybe $50 a week. a joke considering the money involved and what it brought in.