Jimmy Spithill, the skipper of 35th America’s Cup Defender Oracle Team USA, has placed plans to undergo elbow surgery on the back burner.

The 2014 ISAF Rolex World Sailor of the Year was due to have an operation this month to rectify an elbow injury he claims he disguised during Oracle’s amazing America’s Cup victory over Emirates Team New Zealand in San Francisco in 2013.

However, according to Peter Rush, spokesman for the America’s Cup Event Authority, Spithill has placed the procedure on hold for the time being.

“He put off his operation due to the Sydney Hobart Race and I think the hard part for him is the rehab and recovery,” Rush said. “He has said as much and he is having a hard time finding the eight or twelve weeks the doctors tell him needs to do to rehab.”

Spithill completed the 628 nautical mile race on the super maxi yacht, Comanche, which finished second behind Wild Oats XI in the battle for line honours.

It remains unclear when the Australian sailor will undergo surgery for torn tendons in his elbow, or whether he will be available for the start of the America’s Cup World Series later this year.

After completing the biggest comeback in sports history to retain the ‘Auld Mug’ nearly two years ago, Spithill revealed that he had torn tendons in his elbow before the 35th America’s Cup which was kept under wraps.

“During the regatta I had cortisone shots,” Spithill, Australia’s only two-time winning America’s Cup skipper, was quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, Rush and some of his fellow America’s Cup Event Authority colleagues have already begun moving into their new offices in Hamilton.

“The America’s Cup Event Authority are in the process of opening up our operations in Bermuda with an eye of being set up here in March,” Rush said. “At the moment people from the Event Authority are coming in individually for work, to look at housing and schools and get themselves set up for the America’s Cup.

“It’s a little bit more difficult for the team because they’ve got a lot of boats and equipment and things that are at the last venue in San Francisco. But they are also in the process of getting closed down over there and coming over here. A lot of their [Oracle] staff will start to come over here within the next couple of weeks with an eye to being here a bit later in the spring, and they are going to be based in Dockyard.”

Racing in the 35th America’s Cup will take in the Great Sound which Rush described as “challenging”.

“The racecourse looks absolutely incredible,” he said. “The thing people who haven’t been here won’t appreciate, until they have been here, is that it’s almost a fully enclosed amphitheatre.

“It’s almost a perfect circle with the little islands and the reefs and the main island so it’s absolutely ideal in terms of the of the spectator experience.

“For the racing it’s going to be really challenging because of that. It’s a smaller area so it’s going to be a tight racecourse and the guys are going to be working all the time to get their boats around that racetrack.”