America's Cup: Top six qualify for Match Race Championship

8:54 PM Fri 12 Aug 2011 GMT

'Cascais(PRT)-34th America's Cup-AC World Series-Cascais 2011-Racing day 5' Gilles Martin-Raget/www.americascup.com Click Here to view large photo

Six teams have qualified for the America's Cup World Series Match Race Championship on Saturday, following a day of close, compelling competition on the waters off Cascais, Portugal.

On Friday, James Spithill and his ORACLE Racing crew won all three fleet races, but their good work was undone in the 'all or nothing' match race for first place, when Emirates Team New Zealand made a pass on the second lap of the course to secure the match, and victory on the day. It was the third consecutive day of scoring maximum points for the Kiwis, who now proceed directly to Saturday's semi finals.

'It starts again tomorrow,' Barker said. 'The last three days don't matter too much. We've learned a lot in both match racing and the fleet racing. It hasn't been smooth, these boats are challenging to sail well and if you make a mistake you get penalized badly, so it will be case of minimizing mistakes to keep sailing around the track.'

Spithill's disappointment at losing the match race will be tempered by his second place seeding heading into Saturday; he also earns a bye into the semi finals.

'These have been some of the best match races I've ever done,' Spithill said. 'It's physical, and with the onboard footage, I think people watching are getting a real understanding of how high-pressure these decisions are and how hard it is. And I think that's great.'

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by ACM