America's Cup Decoder

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wanting to watch the first two-boat duel but will be on the go when the AC72s hit San Francisco Bay? Check out one of the many America's Cup mobile options, from their app to livestream on YouTube to Facebook and Twitter in four different languages (Spanish, French, Italian and English).

If Twitter is your thing and you are a hardcore sailor, visit the America's Cup Live feed, where event organizers will be sharing live key moments from the races using a process they call Chatter. Chatter is both automated and manual, with information being generated directly from the boats and the race management systems as well from the people who operate them, and it all feeds into the America's Cup Live twitter feed to be shared with the public. 

Since brevity is the better part of valor on Twitter, you might notice some shorthand in each of the Chatter texts. Here's a handy primer to explain what you might see.

  • WND will highlight wind direction or strength in KTS
  • PRO includes official race notes from the Principal Race Officer John Craig and his team, including course selection, current, start and finishes, and noting which side of course the teams will enter from
  • UMP includes actions by the officiating team, including when penalties are given and completed 
  • NZL is challenger Emirates Team New Zealand and NZ2 is their second boat
  • ITA is challenger Luna Rossa
  • SWE is challenger Artemis Racing
  • USA is defender ORACLE Team USA and US2 is Oracle's second team
  • When the team name is listed with the code "Yankee Flag," that team has issued a protest against the other boat
  • DNS tells when a team did not start a race
  • DNF tells when a team did not finish
  • DSQ is when a team is disqualified, which includes when a team capsizes
  • OCS tells when a team has started too early

And when you see TIM, that's not timing or timeline. It's Telemetry Interface Metadata or race notes from outside of the automated system by Tim Heidmann, one of the bright minds of the Cup. He's the man behind the infrastructure process that supplies all of the data to the Cup's important systems including LiveLine, the umpire application and the race management programs.