“Rice is going to get smashed.” Those were the fighting words of pro surfer Jamie O’Brien when asked to predict the outcome of Red Bull Battle in the Bay, a best-out-of-3 sailing race series and skipper duel against pro snowboarder Travis Rice. Each was provided a $1 million ORACLE TEAM USA (OTUSA) 45-foot catamaran, complete with names affixed onto the sails.
To ensure teams were evenly matched, each athlete drafted sailors from ORACLE TEAM USA to round out their squads. O’Brien selected OTUSA skipper Jimmy Spithill with the #1 pick of the draft, and grinder Shannon Falcone went to Rice with the 2nd pick. In advance of racing, they both spent two days training with OTUSA to learn about the bay’s wind and current conditions, and went through a day-in-the-life workout session with the defending America’s Cup champions.
In this waterman vs. mountain man showdown, O’Brien upset Rice in the first race, leveraging a favorable current in the bay to push him to victory. In Race 2, Rice stepped up his game and made a course correction on strategy to take his first win. It all came down to Race 3 where Rice continued to get into a groove with his teammates, making strong tactical decisions to seal the win.
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Despite commanding home-court advantage in the ongoing 34th America’s Cup, the past two weeks haven’t been great for the Defender, Oracle Racing USA. The International Jury found the U.S.-flagged team guilty of having illegally doctored several of their AC45s and slapped the team with a (relatively) nominal fee ($250K), a two-win penalty and-likely the stiffest punishment-the expulsion/suspension of several team members, including their ace wingsail trimmer Dirk de Ridder.
Listen to Oracle skipper Jimmy Spithill at a press conference and you’d never know that there was a performance issue. Yet study Spithill’s on-the-water countenance and … More
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Step onboard the speedy AC72 with defending America’s Cup Champions, Oracle Team USA. See what it takes to operate one of the world’s fastest sailing vessels, in one of the world’s most demanding and challenging settings, the San Francisco Bay.
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