Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Oracle Team USA, once way behind, has tied the series to force a winner-take-all race on Wednesday.
SAN FRANCISCO — The America's Cup has produced no shortage of strange scenes in its 162 years. There have been capsizings, shattered masts and shattered spirits, but it has never produced a reversal of fortune quite like this year.
A week ago, the defender of the trophy, Oracle Team USA, bankrolled by the American billionaire Larry Ellison, trailed by eight races to one and was just one defeat from losing the most prestigious prize in yachting to the challenger, Emirates Team New Zealand.
But by winning seven races in succession, including two on Tuesday, Oracle has tied the series at 8-8. Winds permitting, the rivals from different hemispheres will contest one final race Wednesday, winner take all.
Perhaps Ellison, one of the world's richest men, should have had the event won from the start. As the owner of the defending champion, he got to select where the race would be and what type of boats would be used. He designed a boat so technically advanced and expensive that only three other teams signed up to challenge it, a low figure attributed to the global economic downturn.
Despite those advantages, Oracle Team USA got off to a stunningly poor start. An event that had been billed as a potential economic boost for this city and a source of international fanfare felt more like a punch line.
But that was last week. After making changes to its boat that have improved upwind speed and after making a change to its lineup, replacing the tactician John Kostecki with the star British sailor Ben Ainslie, Oracle has mounted such a remarkable comeback that it begs for a dry-land comparison, like the Boston Red Sox winning four consecutive games to overcome the Yankees in the 2004 American League Championship Series.
"It's not over; that's the key point here — we've got to finish it off," said Jimmy Spithill, Oracle's skipper, helmsman and cheerleader in chief. He added: "There's this huge wave of momentum now that we've been riding for the past few days and it just builds and it builds and it builds. And we're going to carry that into tomorrow."
The gripping endgame represents quite a change in tone for an event that was widely viewed as a fiasco in its preliminary phases. America's Cups have traditionally been contested in monohull yachts, but this one was staged in fast, fragile 72-foot catamarans capable of hitting speeds over 50 miles an hour and sailing — no, flying — on hydrofoils after a design breakthrough by Team New Zealand that forced other teams to follow suit.
But a series of accidents raised questions about the concept. Oracle capsized during a training maneuver on San Francisco Bay last October and did major damage to the first of its two boats. In May, the British sailor Andrew Simpson died after the Swedish challenger Artemis Racing capsized its AC72 during training.
The accident led to a series of rule changes designed to increase safety, along with a major reduction in wind limits for racing, which meant that a regatta initially designed to be contested in a wide range of weather conditions became much more susceptible to delays.
That has proved problematic in this America's Cup, now the longest in history at 19 days, in part because of numerous postponements. That has chopped up the drama and forced organizers to scramble, with the regatta stretching well past its last scheduled finishing date. Bleachers on Marina Green were being dismantled Tuesday with the winner still in doubt.
But the bottom line has been suspense.
The America's Cup is the most famous yachting race, both for its long history and for the powerful personalities and tycoons it has attracted, from the British tea merchant and graceful loser Thomas Lipton to the brash media mogul Ted Turner to Ellison, who spent hundreds of millions of dollars chasing the Cup with a series of challenges and has spent hundreds of millions more staging it and defending it in San Francisco.
Yet despite its high profile, the America's Cup has rarely been a close yachting race. Most of the matches between challenger and defender have been lopsided affairs short on close finishes and telegenic appeal. But this Cup match is now the closest in 30 years. In September 1983, Australia II and Liberty faced off in another winner-take-all race off Newport, R.I., and the Australians came from behind to end the 132-year American winning streak.
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