International sailing umpire/judge Peter Shrubb has hailed the 34th America’s Cup as the “most exciting” — even though the team he backed came out on the losing end.Led by Australian skipper Jimmy Spithill, Oracle Team USA erased a seemingly insurmountable deficit to prevail against plucky challenger Emirates Team New Zealand in a best-of-17 series that went down to the wire in San Francisco on Wednesday.“This was the most exciting America’s Cup by a long-shot,” Shrubb said. “The technology was incredible and the racing was incredible in terms of lead changes.“We didn’t expect to see lead changes in this regatta because normally the faster boat would get ahead after right the start and stay ahead and extend. But with this we had a lot of lead changes all through the race which really made for exciting racing.”Oracle Team USA, whose crew included two-time Argo Group Gold Cup winning skipper and multiple Olympic gold medallist Ben Ainslie, overcame a pre-match penalty as well as an 8-1 deficit to retain the revered Auld Mug it won three years ago.“They obviously did something to improve the speed of the boat,” added Shrubb, who officiated at the 2007 America’s Cup in Valencia, Spain.“I think in the beginning half of the regatta the Kiwis had a faster boat and were sailing better and then Oracle made some changes to their boat and had bit more time on the water and by the end of the regatta their boat was clearly faster.”The regatta was contested in 72-foot catamarans, capable of reaching speeds up to 50mph, that were the vision of Oracle Team USA owner Larry Ellison and team CEO Russell Coutts.Kiwi Coutts, who won the America’s Cup for New Zealand in 1995 and 2000, is the most decorated skipper in local Argo Group Gold Cup history having won the regatta a record seven times between 1990 and 2004.It was the first time the America’s Cup has been raced inshore with San Francisco Bay providing a breathtaking racecourse.Shrubb, a past Royal Bermuda Yacht Club (RBYC) commodore, was among those backing skipper Dean Barker and crew of Emirates Team New Zealand to win.“I was hoping New Zealand would win for a number of reasons: one is New Zealand is a small country of 4.4 million going up against United States of over 300 million and the funding the Kiwis had is certainly not the funding that the Oracle team has had,” he explained. “The other thing, everybody was hoping New Zealand would win because they would change some of the nationality rules that presently apply which lead to Oracle Team USA having only one American on the boat. I think people were a little distraught about that whereas the Kiwis had mostly Kiwis on their boat and the American boat only had one American.“I was at an overseas event when the America’s Cup started and a lot of Americans were routing for the underdog. The Kiwis were the underdogs in terms of the size of the population and funding and everyone was just hoping New Zealand would prevail but unfortunately it was not to be.“I think they have done so well to get as far as they did, but it’s very disappointing they were not able to win the cup especially after leading that one light air race by such as huge margin and having it called off because of the time limit. Then there were the two other races where they were clearly ahead and for one reason or the other one got called off because of the wind strength and then the other they did that bad tack.”