Match racing ace Chris Steele - Oracle's Jimmy Spithill in a 'different league' to Peter Burling

Team New Zealand had a close finish with Artemis. Photo / Ricardo Pinto

By Chris Steele

With light winds predicted in Bermuda tomorrow I can't see Team New Zealand being beaten by Artemis. Everything is set for a Team NZ v Oracle America's Cup final.

If only I had similar confidence about that final though, because Oracle and skipper Jimmy Spithill are a completely different matter to facing Artemis. Team New Zealand are going to need a lot of luck with the weather to take the Auld Mug off the defenders.

When the wind is under 10 knots, the Team NZ foils have given them a massive advantage over everyone else in this regatta. Even Oracle will struggle against the Kiwis in light airs - no one can touch them in those conditions.

Otherwise, it's advantage Oracle because Spithill is in a different league as a match racer. Team NZ helmsman Peter Burling comes from a fleet racing background as does the Artemis skipper Nathan Outteridge and Spithill will be licking his lips over the prospect of facing either.

Burling v Spithill (assuming it happens) is a clash of styles. Spithill will be the aggressor, using his match racing ability to control. Burling will want clean races, backing himself to pick the right wind shifts. He will attempt to use his boat speed in an effort to sail around Oracle rather than duelling next to them

From what I am hearing from Bermuda, Oracle have spent the past two days working hard on their starts against their regatta partners Team Japan, skippered by Kiwi Dean Barker. There has been a lot of scrutiny over Team NZ's starting woes and while they were beaten again today, their tactics and processes have clearly improved. It was execution which let them down.

Oracle will be tweaking their boat but it takes 10 weeks to build race-reliable foils so there was only so much they could ever do during this regatta to catch up to Team NZ's light air superiority. But when it comes to boat-on-boat manoeuvres and tactics, Oracle are scary good including at the starts.

Burling carries the load for Team NZ. He is an outstanding tactician, but a novice match racer compared to Spithill. Oracle, meanwhile, have a brilliant tactician themselves in Tom Slingsby who is a master at reading the breeze. The guy with the greatest match racing experience on the Team NZ boat is Josh Junior, and he's grinding away in the peloton.

Team NZ will sleep a little easier tonight with a 4-2 advantage over Artemis, but it could have been 3-3 so easily. I'm a little mystified as to what happened at the last mark in the final race today, where Team NZ came off the foils for no apparent reason allowing Artemis to make up a 350 metre deficit. It actually looked as though Burling forgot where the finish line was.

The finish line was on the left hand side of the bottom gate for the last race, whereas it had been on the right for the previous two races. The way the Team NZ guys were sailing into that bottom gate, they were set up for that previous configuration. I'm not 100 per cent sure, but that's my best guess without hearing more of the on-board communications.

Team NZ were forced into a really late gybe, and fell off the foils. It takes them time to get that new daggerboard into the water and Artemis zoomed into contention. The Team NZ cyclors were outstanding in finding the pressure to push that board down. And we were super lucky that Artemis needed a drastic angle change at the end, allowing Team NZ to sneak back into the lead.

* Chris Steele is a world top-10 ranked match racer from Devonport. He is the only Kiwi to have won a world Optimist title.