(09-13) 12:42 PDT -- Time is running out on Oracle Team USA. The America's Cup could belong to New Zealand by Sunday. If so, the U.S. team will look back ruefully on the upwind leg of the racecourse.

It's their Bermuda Triangle.

Their hopes fly in and don't fly out.

The Kiwis have such a strong advantage in that third leg of the five, all they need is a stalemate in the rest of the race.

Form held true Thursday when they swept Races 6 and 7 in impressive fashion. With a 6-to-minus-1 lead, they could lose the next six races and still be ahead. That won't happen, of course. They need only three more wins.

"Imagine if these guys lost from here - they've almost got it in the bag," Oracle skipper Jimmy Spithill said, redefining the term "wishful thinking." "That's my motivation. That would be one hell of a story. That would be one hell of a comeback."

During a near-post-mortem of a news conference, Spithill creatively came up with several ways to say his team won't surrender.

"We're not going to give up," he said. "I can guarantee you we won't do that. We're still going to keep fighting all the way to the end. There's still a lot of racing. I'm convinced we can still win races."

Maybe so, but it didn't make any difference that Olympic hero Ben Ainslie was in the tactician's role for the first time. Unfortunately for Oracle, Ferdinand Magellan couldn't have bailed Oracle out of this mess.

Ainslie was knighted after the London Olympics - he won his record fourth Olympic gold medal there. Spithill picked him to replace John Kostecki after the Bay Area native's tactical blunder Tuesday, when he called for a hairpin turn at nearly full throttle. Not even Mario Andretti in his heyday could have pulled off that move.

It wasn't so much that Kostecki was making bad calls, Spithill said. He just wanted to shake up things.

"That's sort of professional sport nowadays. If you've got a lot of depth on the bench, sometimes you'll try something - mix it up."

In the other words: Oh, what the heck.

Kostecki seconded the decision, according to Spithill, and helped counsel Ainslie on what to look for. Sir Ben apparently paid immediate dividends. In Race 6, delayed from Tuesday because Oracle needed a timeout, Spithill had his best start of the finals. Barker was trapped in a trailing position heading toward the starting line, so Oracle won the start convincingly and beat the Kiwis to the first mark by nine seconds.

It didn't matter. The Kiwi Leg is what counts most.

On that upwind third leg, out of five legs in the race, the Kiwis got exactly what they wanted: an extended tacking duel. Their hulls are wider and rounder than Oracle's. Because the boats are not on the foils during the upwind leg, the added buoyancy of the hulls makes New Zealand faster.

Until the finals, Oracle had no idea how pronounced the difference was. "It is a shock that they have the edge upwind," Spithill said. "Potentially, we've got a little edge downwind."

The emphasis should be on "a little." You'd need tweezers to measure the difference.

In Race 6, the Kiwis converted a 12-second deficit into a 44-second lead on the upwind leg. After a couple of early lead changes, a telling moment came when skipper Dean Barker held a slight advantage and executed a "dial-down" - essentially a game of chicken - that forced Spithill to veer off to avoid a collision. That cost his team a second or two, and New Zealand took command.

The Kiwis made Race 7 a rout. Soon thereafter, Barker was asked if he knew his boat-crazed nation of 4 million people is going wild now that the Cup is in sight.

"To be perfectly honest with you, I try to avoid reading about anything that's going on back home," he said.

He said he would be happy to celebrate with his countrymen if his team wins the Cup, "but right now, we're very focused on what we've got to do."

Right now, he's got a big leg up. It's the upwind one.

De Ridder's appeal denied: Oracle wing trimmer Dirk de Ridder's appeal of his dismissal from the America's Cup has been denied.

The review board of the International Sailing Federation said it lacked the authority to reinstate de Ridder because the decision of the jury to dismiss him is considered "final and binding" by the protocol of the 34th America's Cup.

America's Cup

What: Finals on San Francisco Bay

Next races: 1:15 and 2:15 p.m. Saturday

Score: Emirates Team New Zealand, 6; Oracle Team USA, minus-1



TV: NBC Sports Network, Cozi-TV. Replays will be shown on the America's Cup YouTube channel immediately after any live telecast.
