Let Battle Commence

The 35th America’s Cup Promises to Be One of the Most Closely Fought Ever. We Look at Why
 

- Andy Rice

If Jimmy Spit hill had been invited to step into a time machine ten years ago to catch a glimpse of what his future looked like, even his famously cool head would have exploded with what he saw. Flying about the water at 50 knots in catamarans? It would have seemed like pure science-fiction.

Ten years ago Spit hill had never even sailed a multi hull. The young Australian was plying his trade as one of the hottest match racing helmsmen, employed to get the best out of Luna Rossa’s Version 5 keelboat at the 2007 America’s Cup. No Version 5 ever exceeded much more than 10 knots, upwind or down. Now he pilots a craft capable of almost five times that speed.

As Spit hill sits at the wheel of a foiling spaceship capable of warp speed, with an array of PlayStation-style controls at his fingertips, all those wasted hours of his youth playing high-speed video games mustn’t seem so wasted after all.

Ten years ago, Russell Coutts had been cast into outer darkness. The infamous ‘Coutts Clause’ put in place by Alinghi was designed to keep the wily Kiwi out of the game after he had so spectacularly fallen out with his former employer, Ernesto Bertarelli. How the tables have turned since Coutts’s replacement boss, Larry Ellison, has given the New Zealander free rein to shape the Cup as he sees fit.

All that we see today originates from the creative mind of Coutts. Not that everyone likes what they see, because this brave new world is not everyone’s idea of what the Cup should be.