It's reportedly an American Journalist, Bruce Knecht, who has made the claim. Granted, it's separated by 2 degrees - the article says he said it.
edit; there's also a video of him talking about it. Something's not right there - They have to be getting some terminology confused. There's no way they were pumping the main at speed to do what he claims; "to get the boat on it's foils". They can foil upwind at anytime by just canting the foil but didn't do so very often because the foil born configuration allowed the boat to side slip too much. Oracle seemed to foot and lightly foil upwind when they saw a shift or pressure on the other side of the course that they wanted to get to. They could obviously foil easily downwind. It is nonsensical.
Last edited by Jake; 03/04/16 11:01 AM.