Oracle BMW Left Asking, What If?

Following their elimination in the finals of Louis Vuitton Cup 2003, Larry Ellison’s Oracle BMW Racing team is left asking “What if?”

What if they hadn’t got penalties in two of the six races? What if they had covered in a few key instances instead of splitting away? What if they had a boat more like the other challengers, in the long and heavy corner of the rule?

One answer is that they’d still be in the series, trailing 4-2 instead of eliminated at 5-1. In the end, however, it’s likely they’d still have succumbed to Alinghi. The Swiss team was that good.

“Some of the races we sailed exceptionally well,” said Ellison. “It’s just that they sailed better. I think that is the best sailing team and the best sailing I’ve seen ever in my life.”

The finals were a see-saw affair that the 5-1 scoreline doesn’t accurately reflect. There were tense moments for both crews. The leader at the first windward mark did not win every race. There were seven lead changes in the last four races.

Today’s lead change was more devastating than any before. Looking back on the sixth and deciding race, Ellison might question why Oracle BMW split from Alinghi on the second beat. Oracle BMW seemed in a solid position on the 3-mile leg.

They led around the previous leeward mark by 28 seconds. The conditions were in their favour with flat water and winds in the 8-knot range. They were conditions in which USA-76 had excelled upwind in the last few races.

Oracle BMW had built that lead by playing the right side of the first beat and capitalising on their slippery nature downwind. About one-third of the way up the second beat they extended that lead to 160 metres, or seven lengths, by playing the right side. Their wind spotter up the mast, Cameron Dunn, was calling pressure on the right side the whole leg.

Inexplicably, Oracle BMW took the left in the latter half of the beat. Alinghi, to the right, found the pressure they needed to pass. “The shift didn’t save us,” said Alinghi tactician Brad Butterworth. “He (Oracle) just died in that (left) corner.”

Later, Butterworth said, “The top of the second beat was a very difficult place for them to choose a side. When we left them going right one of us was going to win and it was hard to tell who, but the dice came our way.”

A split like that is just one item that syndicate chief Ellison, owner and skipper of the three-time IMS Maxi World Champion Sayonara, bemoaned.

“I’ve got a long list of regrets including mark roundings, jibing at different times, taking the left-hand or right-hand side of the course,” said Ellison. “Looking back it’s easy to think about things that we could’ve done better.”

One move Ellison made to try and right wrongs early in the regatta was to bring Dickson back into the fold. The skipper had been shunned and ousted in a near mutiny by crewmembers in February 2002 due to his difficult personality in training.

After a 5-3 record in Round 1 of the Louis Vuitton Cup and then a loss to Prada in the first race of Round 2, Ellison exerted his ultimate authority and recalled Dickson. Ellison gave him ultimate control of the syndicate, which promptly took off on an 11-race winning streak that carried it into the semi finals.

Dickson compiled a 16-9 record as skipper of Oracle BMW Racing. All nine of those losses, however, came at the hands of fellow New Zealand countryman Russell Coutts and the Alinghi squad.

He has won more races in the Louis Vuitton Cup than any other skipper. Since the 1986-’87 Louis Vuitton Cup he has compiled a 96-36 record. But in a bad omen, today, Jan. 19, marked the 16-year anniversary of Dickson’s elimination from that Louis Vuitton Cup, his first ever.

Tonight, like 16 years ago, Dickson is second once again. “It’s no fun coming second in a match race and that hasn’t changed,” Dickson said.

Source: Louis Vuitton Cup

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