Oracle Team USA appeared headed toward a resounding defeat in sailing’s marquee regatta, on home waters, when skipper Jimmy Spithill delivered a line that will live in America’s Cup lore.
After losing six of the first seven races to Team New Zealand in 2013 on San Francisco Bay, Spithill was asked how he and his team of all-star sailors could stay motivated.
“I think the question is, imagine if these guys lost from here,” the uber-competitive Australian said at a news conference at the 2013 America’s Cup in San Francisco, glancing at Kiwi skipper Dean Barker sitting a few feet away. “What an upset that would be. They have almost got it in the bag. So that’s my motivation. That would be one hell of a story, that would be one hell of a comeback and that’s the kind of thing that I’d like to be part of.”
Barker looked as if he’d just seen the Grim Reaper. Spithill backed up his Nostradamus-like prediction as he helped deliver one of the greatest comebacks in sports with eight straight victories at match point to retain the Auld Mug.
A two-time winner, Spithill said he believes he has raced in his last America’s Cup after his Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli was beaten in the challengers’ final on Friday in Barcelona, Spain, by his former Oracle crewmate Sir Ben Ainslie and INEOS Britannia.
“I really think I am at the end of the line now. I think this is it for me,” the 45-year-old Spithill said, while lauding all the young sailing talent coming up behind him.
“I think you have to be realistic, I wasn’t good enough to get it done here and I think it’s time the gloves are hung up,” Spithill, who was a boxer during his youth in Australia, said in a shoreside TV interview.
This was his eighth consecutive America’s Cup and third with Luna Rossa.
Luna Rossa fell 7-4 to INEOS Britannia in the Louis Vuitton Cup finals. The British will face Emirates Team New Zealand in the America’s Cup match.
Spithill was in his second campaign with co-helmsman Francesco Bruni. In 2021 in Auckland, they had steered Luna Rossa into the final where they fell to the Kiwis, 7-3.
At age 20, Spithill became the youngest skipper in America’s Cup history when he led a bare-bones Australian challenge in the 1999-2000 regatta. At age 30 in 2010, he became the then-youngest skipper to win sailing’s biggest prize when he helmed tech billionaire Larry Ellison’s 90-foot trimaran to victory in a one-off against Alinghi of Switzerland following a bitter court battle between billionaires.
Spithill first sailed with Luna Rossa in the 2007 America’s Cup in Valencia, Spain. Italian fans and broadcasters were so smitten with his aggressive tactics that they nicknamed him “Jesse James Spithill” — after the legendary American gunslinger — and “James Pitbull.”
Spithill told The Associated Press late last year that he is planning to start an Italian team in Ellison’s SailGP global league and expects to have more details later this fall.
He lives full-time in San Diego with his American wife and two sons.
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Bernie Wilson has covered sailing for The Associated Press since 1991.
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Associated Press Writer Joseph Wilson contributed from Barcelona.
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