Americas Cup Series, Cascais: Final Day for Team New Zeland

Photo: Ricardo Pinto – AC Media

Team New Zealand was the winner of the last day. I think they have the best speed, and oracle 4 with Spithill the best boat handling. These are the teams to beat.

Ashby is a key member of TNZ, he trained Spithill, coaching for the 33Cup, plus a F18 Worlds together, plus A-Class and C-Class racing. By now James is an experienced multihull sailor.

And then Ashby went to TNZ and put Barker on an A-Class, where Dean excelled.

So beyond the quality of both teams, Glenn Ashby should take lots of credits for his work with Oracle and now with Team New Zeland.Left photo Gilles Martin Raget

In the conference below, I was glad to hear Coutts naming Darren Bundock. Darren confirmed he coached oracle team on multi ‘basics’. So he is training this cat rookie, Coutts, that was quite annoyed with his team performance at the en of the week.

In my view they should put Bundy on Oracle 5 at Plymouth.

No more to add reagarding the racing, just check the replays, specially the match races between TNZ and Oracle 4.

Day 7 Full Replay https://youtu.be/DwANt5VbOMs

Day 6 Full Replay https://youtu.be/bmsFAgXqL5g

Russell Coutts was being asked about the success of the AC45s and the racing format, he replied something like: “yeah, yeah… but better with us (Oracle 5) winning”. Check Coutts actual words plus Spithill on the non believers and taking on Barker on this soon to be a classic press conference, a must see: