Spithill under fire

Sir Russell Coutts has put heat on Jimmy Spithill to lift his game in SailGP. Spithill’s struggles with his United States team have been an unexpected feature in season three of the global league. The US haven’t won a fleet race or featured in a podium race this season in an alarming drop of form that has them lying a distant seventh amongst the nine teams, a point not missed by SailGP mastermind Coutts as he surveyed his fleet heading into the Denmark event in Copenhagen this weekend. ‘‘When it comes to Jimmy Spithill and the American team, it’s clear that flight control problems were still an issue in Plymouth, but the team also made some really big tactical blunders,’’ Coutts wrote in his Russell Report on SailGP. ‘‘I don’t know how many more events they can keep sticking with this combination. They say that they need to stick with it, and eventually it will come right, but how long is it going to take?’’