Jimmy Spithill
'A two-time America’s Cup winning skipper, world match-racing champion and multiple Sydney to Hobart champion.
Competing at his 8th successive America’s Cup in 2024 he is well remembered for orchestrating one of the great comebacks of the famous event when he helmed Oracle team USA to victory over New Zealand at the 2013 event.’
Growing up in Pittwater, New South Wales, Jimmy Spithill spent his youth surrounded by water. With no access by road, Jimmy's home was only accessible by boat, so sailing became an everyday necessity.
“It was a way of life to spend hours on the water,” he says. “It’s like a surfer growing up at Sunset Beach.”
Spithill started windsurfing at the age of five and when nine his father Arthur found an old abandoned wooden dinghy which they restored.
He then won the first race he entered at age 10 with his younger sister Katie.
Precociously talented, he progressed to junior match-racing success before finishing third in the deadly 1998 Sydney to Hobart aboard the late Syd Fischer’s Ragamuffin.
A year later at 19 he was asked to helm Young Australia and at 20 became the youngest skipper in the history of the America’s Cup when he led the young crew into the 2000 Louis Vuitton Cup.
In 2003 and 2004 Spithill won back-to-back Nations Cup titles and in 2005 was the Match Racing World champion after a victory on home waters.
In 2003 he made the semifinals of the Louis Vuitton Cup aboard Oneworld, before being handed the reigns of the Italian syndicate Luna Rossa Challenge for the 2007 Cup which made it all the way to the Challenger Finals.
In 2010, Spithill again rewrote history as the youngest winner of the America’s Cup as helmsman and skipper of BMW Oracle Team.
“It was relief and ecstasy, like a huge weight came off my shoulders,” he said about the 2010 win.
Three years on he led one of the greatest sporting comebacks ever, as Oracle Team USA came from minus two behind to beat New Zealand 9-8 to claim his second America's Cup victory.
He was again at the helm of Oracle’s 2017 defence Bermuda, where they lost to the innovative challenge from Emirates Team New Zealand by a score of 7-1.
Spithill then join the Challenger of Record entry, Luna Rossa Challenge and in 2021 he steered Luna Rossa to victory in the Prada Cup before losing in the Finals, and in 2024 Luna Rossa made the final of the Louis Vuitton Cup.
Spithill now holds the honour of winning the most races in the history of the America’s Cup as a skipper.
This sailing ace has also raced five Sydney Hobarts with his results including a line honours win in LDV Comanche in 2017.
He was also helmsman and CEO of the United States SailGP Team from 2020 to 2023 before departing to launch the Italy SailGP team.
During his stellar career he won Australian Male Sailor of the Year twice in 2006 and 2010 and was named Rolex World Sailor of the Year in 2014.