Sailing: Light winds offer Oracle new hope

They needed to pull one out of the hat, and the victory which stopped the Alinghi team of Switzerland in its Louis Vuitton Cup final tracks yesterday could not have been sweeter for Chris Dickson and the crew of the San Francisco-based Oracle BMW.

Even his manager, the less-than-happy as Larry Ellison, had a huge smile on his face as he watched Dickson and his helmsman, Peter Holmberg, peg the Swiss team's lead back to 3-1 after four races of the best-of-nine challenger series.

It encouraged an even bigger crowd to turn out and cheer home an underdog who had given hope to home supporters. The crowd have turned against their former hero Russell Coutts, the man who won and defended the Cup for New Zealand but is now branded a traitor.

With many having felt denied on Wednesday, when Oracle again muscled its way past an Alinghi expected by many to sweep without trouble to the five wins it needs to earn the right to race Team New Zealand for the America's Cup next month, there was even an element of justice having been restored.

Oracle had felt that Alinghi should have been penalised not once but twice in that third race of the series before they were penalised themselves. Oracle should have won; given a second chance they stuck to their guns and backed their own hunches.

The Hauraki Gulf is so unpredictable that even the best can be hung out to dry. In the fourth race it minced reputations and expectations with equal ruthlessness.

Russell Coutts' men were not just hung, but cold smoked in conditions which suited Oracle perfectly. "We got a monkey off our back by being able to score a point against Alinghi, which has been a bit of a problem for us," said the Oracle navigator, Ian Burns.

Whether this was a more permanent turnround in the Oracle saga or just a stay of execution remains to be seen, though the winning margin of 2min 13sec shows just how separated teams, which claim to have similar performance, can become in such a light air lottery. And more of the same is predicted for the next two or three days.

LOUIS VUITTON CUP (Challenger series for America's Cup; Auckland, NZ) Final: Oracle USA-76 bt Alinghi (Swit) 2min 13sec (Alinghi lead best-of-nine races 3-1).