America's Cup: Prada coup perfect: Jimmy Spithill on course for the "Red Moon"

The rumour that has been simmering for some time has now been confirmed: Two-time America's Cup winner Jimmy Spithill is celebrating his comeback with the Italian team Luna Rossa Challenge. Racing stable owner and Prada patriarch Patrizio Bertelli has brought back the Australian, who has already been in his service once before, thus emphasising his ambition to finally win the most coveted trophy in international sailing for Italy for the first time.

Spithill celebrated his America's Cup premiere 16 years ago as the youngest helmsman in history with the Australian team Young Australia and has long been one of the most successful and charismatic minds in the business. Notorious for his aggressiveness, his strong nerves and his psychological provocation of opponents, the now 40-year-old made headlines around the world in 2013 when he and Oracle Team USA were already 8-1 down in the Cup final against Emirates Team New Zealand, but turned it into a 9-8 triumph for the Americans.

It was the Italian Luna Rossa skipper Francesco de Angelis who had brought Spithill to the Italian camp for the 2007 America's Cup. The Azzurri had sailed all the way to the final of the Louis Vuitton challenger series at the time, beating Larry Ellison's Team Oracle BMW Racing 5-1 in the semi-finals on the way. It was only in the challenger final that the Luna Rossa Challenge had to admit defeat to the New Zealanders. Subsequently, Larry Ellison brought Jimmy Spithill, who had since earned the nicknames "Pitbull" and "Spitfire", into his American team and won the exclusive duel against Alinghi and the race off San Francisco with him in 2010. Now it's back to business under the Italian flag for the furious Spithill.

Yet he only knows one goal, as he revealed to YACHT in a recent interview: "At the moment, my hunger for the America's Cup is still great. I feel like I won't be able to sleep properly until I try again to work for another America's Cup win. That's still all I'm thinking about. For me, the goal is to win another America's Cup!" Perhaps Spithill's skill and will, combined with Patrizio Bertelli's insatiable appetite for the Cup, will finally be enough for the first Azzurri victory in Cup history at the 36th edition in 2021 off New Zealand with Luna Rossa (red moon).