Dickson wins twice in one day for Oracle

Oracle's two wins yesterday to finish the second round robin in the America's Cup challenger yachting series completed an unbroken run of victories for the team since the promotion of Chris Dickson to skipper.

Among those pleased with the arrival of the tough-minded New Zealander is helmsman Peter Holmberg, who said after yesterday's races that Dickson had added an element to the team that had been missing.

"If we do the right thing in the break (before the quarterfinals), both with the boats and personnel, I do think we have what we need to take it all the way to the end," Holmberg said.

When Oracle boss Larry Ellison first moved Dickson on to the crew after a shaky run for the big budget San Francisco-based syndicate, Holmberg was moved off the boat.

But that did not last long and Holmberg was soon back at the wheel. It was Ellison who was benched, although the team's official line continues to be that his omission is just part of their usual crew rotation.

Discussing yesterday's races, Holmberg said Oracle had been keen to try out an allowable modification they had made to their boat USA-76.

He would not elaborate on what the change was but said the races had provided an excellent test, although the team still had to decide whether they wanted to keep the modification.

In their races yesterday Oracle beat French team Le Defi by one minute seven seconds and Sweden's Victory Challenge by 43sec. Holmberg said his team felt they had a distinct edge over the two opponents.

But he did not accept suggestions the 14 to 16 knot wind conditions for most of the races yesterday were those that best suited Oracle.

Le Defi mastman Pierre Masse was one who thought Oracle were in the elements that best suited them yesterday.

Downwind he felt Le Defi had been at least as fast as the leading boat but his team's problems had been upwind, he said.

Over the full range of conditions the Swiss Alinghi team was probably doing best now.

"But I think in the heavy wind, about 16 to 20 knots, Oracle seems to be really fast," Masse said.

Although Le Defi was placed eighth after the round robins, he was optimistic they could win through to the semifinals of the challenger series.

"We've improved a lot in the past week," he said.

Their boat would be faster when it sailed again towards the end of the week after some development work.

"We have also to improve a lot the crew work, and it's what we will try to do when we will sail again," Masse said.

The completion of two round robin sections has done little to separate a clear favourite from the top group in the field to take on Team New Zealand for the America's Cup in February.

Oracle were comfortably dominant in yesterday's testy conditions. But OneWorld skipper Peter Gilmour said everyone was reminded towards the end of the second round that as things began to break and wear anything could happen on the race course.

As the regatta had progressed the performance of the boats had become closer and the teams had improved, he said.

Yesterday's results put Oracle into second place behind Alinghi, with OneWorld third and Prada fourth.

OneWorld was one of the teams most affected by improvements elsewhere in the fleet, as their dominance of the first round slipped a little in the second.

In the next phase of the competition, starting on November 12, the top four boats will pair off with Alinghi able to decide which of the other three they want to compete against in a best-of-seven contest.

In the bottom four group, Victory get to choose who they will take on from Stars and Stripes, GBR or Le Defi. These decisions will be announced today.

- NZPA

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