Spithill is filling in as helmsman of Team Australia's “Flying Roo” foiling catamaran while friend and countryman Tom Slingsby is on paternity leave. Spithill left Team USA two weeks ago ahead of the announcement that it had been sold to a private American group whose investors include Alabama linebacker Dallas Turner and actress Issa Rae. “No question, I’d love to go out and absolutely smoke those guys,” Spithill said Friday.
Jimmy Spithill barely made it into the podium race and then brilliantly skippered Team USA to victory in the Spain Sail Grand Prix Cádiz on Sunday, three weeks after crewman Hans Henken was seriously injured. Spithill dedicated Team USA's first victory of SailGP's fourth season to Henken, the flight controller who was knocked unconscious when the team's 50-foot catamaran crashed hard off its foils on the first day of the regatta at Taranto, Italy. Henken was hospitalized for two nights with unspecified injuries and now is back in the United States recovering.