Coutts and Gilmour square off for Toscana Elba Cup

by Sean McNeill on 8 May 2005 Before the start of the Toscana Elba Cup – Trofeo Locman, Stage 5 of the 2004-’05 Swedish Match Tour, veteran Australian skipper, Peter Gilmour, marvelled at the fleet of 12 teams representing syndicates for the 32nd America’s Cup, wondering how ‘hackers such as myself and Russell’ would fair.

Gilmour and Russell Coutts (NZL) are veteran Cup campaigners, but not associated with any of the teams preparing for the event that is a bit more than two years away.

Those same two hackers rose above the fray and are now squaring off in the final of the event for the second year straight.

Coutts won last year’s final 2-1, and like last year, he opened this year’s final by winning the first flight to take a 1-0 lead in the best-of-five series, or first to three points.

This year’s final started this afternoon (local time) and will continue tomorrow. The first race wasn’t as thrilling as the Semi-final Round that preceded it, with the easterly wind dying away and filling from the west.

Gilmour held a big lead around the first windward mark. Coutts closed slightly on the first run, but Gilmour still led at the leeward mark. Coutts overtook him on the second beat and then survived the 180-degree wind shift for the victory.

Coutts and Gilmour advanced to the final after close semi-final matches against James Spithill (AUS), of Italy’s Luna Rossa Challenge for the America’s Cup, and Magnus Holmberg (SWE), of Sweden’s Victory Challenge, respectively.

While Gilmour won 3-1, Coutts won his match against Spithill on the finish line in the fifth and deciding match.

In an easterly wind of between 7 and 10 knots, and with the score tied 2-2, Coutts and Spithill squared off with Coutts the victor on the finish line.

Coutts has high esteem for Spithill; in the past calling him one of the best young sailors around. Spithill has equal regard for Coutts, but in the end, Spithill said it was his mistakes that cost him the match.

With less than 25 seconds to go to the start, Coutts tacked to leeward of Spithill on the start line. Spithill bore off slightly and didn’t keep clear of Coutts’ luff. The boats hit side-by-side, and Spithill was penalized for failing to keep clear.

Making matters worse, Spithill was also over the line early. Forced to tack to port and dip the line while Coutts held starboard, Spithill took port tack off the line and stepped into a nice breeze line to quickly overcome the disadvantage of having to restart, although he still carried the penalty.

To Coutts, the incident should have been red-flagged, meaning that Spithill would have had to do his 270-degree penalty turn as soon as he cleared the start line.

‘I’m amazed it wasn’t red-flagged,’ Coutts said after the match. ‘Any (incident) with five seconds to go, and that clear cut, should be red-flagged. We were dead in the water and they ended up ahead of us.’

After stepping into that breeze line, Spithill tacked to starboard and converged with Coutts. Coutts, on port, couldn’t clear and was forced to tack to leeward, close aboard.

Coutts tried luffing Spithill soon after, but Spithill had too much way-on and simply coasted over the top of Coutts. The Aussie had a comfortable lead around the windward mark and a 22-second advantage at the leeward mark beginning the second of two laps.

Up the second beat, Coutts closed about six seconds, but still trailed at the beginning of the run to the finish. Spithill, carrying the penalty, also carried good speed to the finish line and it appeared he might have enough of a lead to complete the penalty turn.

His crew raised the jib, removed the spinnaker pole and lowered the spinnaker, as Spithill hardened up onto starboard tack. He completed his tack onto port and bore off to the finish as Coutts steamed down on starboard jibe at high speed.

The race committee raised a blue flag, signaling that Spithill had narrowly won the match, but the umpires penalized Spithill a second time, ruling he fouled the starboard-tack as he and Coutts bore off on port.

That forced Spithill to cross the finish line back onto the racecourse to complete another penalty turn. Coutts, meanwhile, sailed for the dock having advanced to the final.

‘I’m really upset with myself,’ Spithill said afterwards. ‘I made two mistakes; the start and not nailing the pin end of the finish.’

While the extra penalty turn on the finish line cost Spithill the race, he lost it when he failed to hit the layline for the pin end. He overstood the mark which set him up to foul Coutts when he completed his penalty turn.

In the Gilmour-Holmberg match, Gilmour, the reigning Swedish Match Tour champion, won the final pre-start to claim the match. He timed his start to the pin end perfectly and tacked to port, while Holmberg was forced to make two down-speed tacks to escape Gilmour’s cover.

Gilmour won the first cross and held a slim eight-second advantage at the windward mark. The gap between the two was never much larger, but Gilmour was always able to stay ahead to convert for the 3-1 series win.

‘We focused on the starts today,’ Gilmour said. ‘The one race we lost we muffed the start.’

Holmberg had similar feelings. ‘I should’ve done a better job in the last pre-start,’ said the Tour’s career victories leader. ‘The starboard boat had been controlling the pre-start, but the wind lightened in the final race and I miss-timed the approach while he got it right.’

The Petit Final for third and fourth place also began this afternoon, and Spithill won the match in equally light winds as the first race of the final. Both series are scheduled to resume tomorrow morning.

While Gilmour can joke about him and Coutts being hackers, they are the two most experienced skippers in the fleet. Neither can recall how many times they’ve faced each other in a match-race final, but one thing is certain - tomorrow: the two crews will display deft boat handling, cunning tactics and a surprise or two.

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