It is not about racing, I think it is all about the advertising money.
The coverage of the race on live TV is on Channel 7. What logo is on WOXI? You guessed it, a big 7. So obviously the coverage is going to be biased, with a strong focus on WOXI.
The TV coverage is also all about the maxis out front for the first few hours. The ideal for CH7 is to have WOXI out front, so that the cameras can linger on that sail with the 7 on it. Ritcho cocks up the start, so now he has to get back in the middle of the TV screen. A lot of money hangs on that, and he is highly stressed and makes a basic mistake.
He knows that if he does the required turns, (A) most importantly, he will drop off the TV screen of the leaders, for that most important part of the first few hours, when the big advertising benefit lies. (B) Turning back and doing the turns in a 100ft maxi with 100 plus racing yachts heading at you in a narrow channel, is going to be full of risk, (C) Probably the penalty will only be maybe 10 minutes.
What would you do?
So he goes for the obvious choice and toughs it out.
IMHO the international jury worked it out as above, and maybe decided on a stiff penalty to discourage the high level of commercialisation, but also playing chicken with gazillion dollar boats.
Select to expand quoteSubsonic said..
I agree, J Spithills writing/spelling could do with some improvement, however, it appears it was ledgible enough to be accepted.
My turn to be a pedant, but hoping to be legible, at least.
