The Green Bears went growling on the San Diego bay on Wednesday and achieved their best result ever in the 34th America’s Cup World Series by finishing 3rd in the day’s last fleet race. Green Comm Racing will face Oracle Racing Russell Coutts on Thursday in the first knock-out match race
San Diego, 16 November 2011: A very good start under picture-perfect conditions. That’s how one could sum up the first day of the America’s Cup World Series in San Diego. Green Comm Racing scored a third, their best ever result in this America’s Cup campaign, in the third fleet race under nice sunshine, flat seas and a breeze between 10 and 12 knots.
The Green Bears had a tough start with two races at the back fleet but then came back growling for the third and final race of the day. Helmsman Vasilij Zbogger pushed hard in the prestart and 30 seconds before the gun he spotted a gap between China Team and James Spithill. When the Chinese momentarily stalled, he stepped on the pedal and zoomed ahead of the fleet.
Green Comm Racing rounded the first mark in the lead and had Team Energy and Oracle Racing Spithill hot on its heels. The French went on to claim the race, and finish first overall, while James Spithill finished second. Green Comm Racing crossed the finish line in third place, scoring its best result so far in the ACWS.
After the closing of the first day of racing in San Diego, Green Comm Racing lies 7th overall, two points ahead of Aleph and China Team, and just 4 points behind Oracle Racing Coutts. The top three teams on today’s ranking are seeded through directly to the Semi Finals of the Match Racing Championship.
The remaining six teams will be paired up to race in Thursday’s qualifying matches, competing in a knockout format to earn the fourth and final Semi Final berth. The first adversary of Green Comm Racing will be Oracle Racing Coutts. The winner of the match will then have two more matches to reach the semis while the loser will race for 7th and 8th place on Saturday.
Quotes of the day
Vasilij Zbogar, helmsman: “The third race was excellent but the first two weren’t disastrous either. The team is finally coming together and we really deserved a good result. In the third race we really pushed hard the start, we rounded the first mark in the lead but then dropped two places. Still, we were happy to be in the front and we had our best result ever.
When were ahead we honestly didn’t think about all the world’s best sailors behind us, we were thinking how we could overtake the ones ahead of us. We will try to win tomorrow.
In the final race we had excellent speed upwind, we had some speed problems downwind as the halyard wasn’t tight enough and we knew we were going to lose ground downwind. We have to fix that as well as some other small details.
I’m very happy with this race but more because the rest of the guys deserved it. They have all been working very hard for the last ten days, working on the boat since eight in the morning, then racing and then back on shore. This result is a great morale booster »