Software billionaire Larry Ellison's Oracle BMW Racing sailed to within one victory of reaching the America's Cup challengers final when they scored their third successive win over US rivals One-World yesterday.
OneWorld stands on the brink of elimination after two bad mistakes helped Oracle to a 55-second win in the third race of their Cup challengers semi-finals repechage.
Ellison's Oracle team have a four-race buffer over Seattle-based OneWorld, who began the best-of-seven race repechage on minus one after they were penalized a point in a long-running scandal over boat design secrets.
The winners of the repechage will sail Alinghi of Switzerland in the challengers final next month.
"We would certainly like to go through as soon as we can," Oracle skipper Chris Dickson told a news conference. "... our task is to focus on winning that one race. We will be trying our best to do that tomorrow," he said.
OneWorld have fought hard against Oracle but the US$75 million team backed by telecom investor Craig McCaw and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen have consistently come up short.
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