Tom Slingsby joins Oracle Racing's America's Cup campaign team
Another world champion Australian sailor has been forced to join an overseas team, owing to Australia's lack of a viable challenge for the 2013 America's Cup in San Francisco.
Triple World Laser Champion and current ISAF International Sailor of the Year, Tom Slingsby, is currently in San Francisco, training with Oracle Racing on their AC 45s in San Francisco Bay. Slingsby joins fellow Australians James Spithill, who helmed Oracle to victory over Alinghi in the last America's Cup, and Darren Bundock, the 2008 Olympic silver medallist in the Tornado class.
Bundock's Tornado partner at Qingdao, Glenn Ashby, was the coach of Oracle Racing at the last Cup and is currently an integral part of the Emirates Team New Zealand America's Cup campaign as both coach and trimmer. Other leading Australian sailors are dotted among the other potential challengers.
The good news for Australian sailing fans is Slingsby's move to the Oracle team should have little impact on his Olympic campaign. He told me from San Francisco this morning: "From now until the Games I can sail whenever it fits my program. Oracle support my Olympic program and don't want to conflict at all. So from now until the Games I have to sit down and see what fits where. Post Olympics I'll be joining the team full-time until the end of the Cup in October 2013."
Slingsby told me before he left for Europe recently, to sail in the Melges 32 Worlds, that he and fellow Olympian Nathan Outteridge were thinking of buying A Class Cats to enhance their America's Cup credentials. Slingsby even went so far as to put his Moth up for sale, so he could buy an A Class. However, it would seem that that is no longer necessary.
Slingsby is unsure where he will fit into the Oracle team. Oracle are top-heavy with world-class sailors, currently campaigning two AC45s in the World Series. One is helmed by Spithill and the other by team boss and winner of three America's Cups, Russell Coutts.
"I'm not sure what position they see me filling. It's early stages for myself joining the team but I have been doing all my sailing in a tactician role. But wherever I fit best," he said.
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Slingsby is renowned as a "wind whisperer", with the ability to read wind shifts a long way up the course. Marcus Blackmore, who employs Slingsby as tactician on his TP52 Hooligan has described this ability as "remarkable" on a number of occasions. He will be a major asset to the Oracle team.
Let's just hope that Australia can mount a credible challenge for the 35th America's Cup Match, and that Slingsby, Spithill, Ashby, Bundock and the rest can be lured home to be part of that challenge.
- Roger McMillan.
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