BMW Oracle-Shosholoza races during Louis Vuitton Cup
Note: This article is related to the comment Juan Kouyoumdjian made in his interview to this website last Monday, regarding the races between BMW Oracle and Team Shosholoza.
An anonymous reader of our website and avid Shosholoza fan from Durban sent us this comment on the victories of BMW Oracle over Shosholoza during the Louis Vuitton Cup last spring in Valencia, together with two screen shots from VirtualEye to corroborate his claim.
Valencia Sailing doesn't endorse these claims but we publish them in order to give the point of view of the South African fans.
When BMW Oracle overtook Shosholoza on the second beat in Round Robin 2, she did so from a separation of nearly 1.5km and a left shift!
In Round Robin 1 she overtook from a big left shift and more wind but from closer as the wind that day was very random.
BMW Oracle had an incredible run of success with passing their opponents on clear shifts, I think they psyched their opposition into making tactical mistakes but also probably got a bit lucky during the rounds which flattered their performance, but then ran out of that lucky streak in the Semifinals...
Of course I would not try to claim that RSA-83 was as quick as USA-98, that
would be daft considering that BMW Oracle had around 20 times the design
budget and most probably a much heavier bulb...
Regards,
Andy
Durban, South Africa
+takes+big+left+shift+%26+pressure+to+pass+RSA83.JPG)
RR1: USA-98 (Blue) takes big left shift and pressure to pass RSA-83+takes+left+shift+to+pass+RSA83.JPG)
RR2: USA-98 (Yellow) takes left shift to pass RSA83
4 Comments:
Why be concerned about the size of the shift and angle of breeze at 1500m apart. be concerned about the fact that while leading they let them get that far away to get the leverage. they deserve to get choke slammed doing that sort of stuff... sorry.
*yawn* South Africa didn't stand a chance. Oracle surely dropped the ball, but they also had much more experience on their side.
On a more significant note why the heck would you care about this several months after the fact? seems incredibly pointless.
I guess it is just a reaction to Juan K's slightly stinging dismissal of Team Shosholoza during his interview with Valencia Sailing. Nevertheless, valid point raised about letting the trailing boat gain so much separation, something you surely wouldn't allow if you were confident of your boatspeed, thus perhaps proving the point JuanK was making.
Because JK said RSA83 was much slower. In those conditions they were anything but.
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