If Oracle BMW Racing had been this good eight months ago, the America's Cup might very well be in the Golden Gate Yacht Club's trophy case.
Oracle beat America's Cup champion Alinghi of Switzerland by 32 seconds in Race 7 Saturday to win the Moet Cup, the first of several regattas leading up to the 2007 America's Cup.
Maybe it was having the home-course advantage on San Francisco Bay that helped Oracle BMW Racing, or that Alinghi's Russell Coutts, the most dominant skipper in the 152-year history of the America's Cup, sat out this regatta.
The Moet Cup was a rematch of the America's Cup challenger finals in January off Auckland, New Zealand. With a crew full of New Zealanders, Alinghi beat Oracle 5-1, then went on to win the America's Cup with a five-race sweep of Team New Zealand. The Kiwis' sailing crew had been decimated by defections to richer syndicates, and major breakdowns knocked their sloop out of two of the five races.
Oracle, backed by Silicon Valley maverick Larry Ellison, made several crew changes since January and had been training hard aboard USA-76 the last several weeks on San Francisco Bay.
"If you want to find out how good of a sailor you are, you have to sail against the best in the world and Alinghi is the best in the world," said Ellison, the chairman and CEO of Oracle Corp."
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