The Great Sound of Bermuda is the picturesque setting for the 35th America’s Cup, which will get under way in earnest on Saturday – after heavy winds postponed day one – with Sir Ben Ainslie then hoping to write another chapter of his country’s maritime history by winning the world’s oldest international sporting trophy for Great Britain.
No British team have triumphed in the race’s 166-year history and in an event so heavily stacked in favour of the defending champions, his is an extremely tall order but confidence seems high. In an interview with the Guardian this week, Ainslie said his Land Rover BAR team were “now in sight of that ultimate goal, which is to bring the America’s Cup to Britain”.
To do so, they will have to defeat Team Oracle, representing the USA and skippered by the Australian Jimmy Spithill, for whom Ainslie was drafted in as tactician during the crew’s astonishing comeback from 8-1 down to beat New Zealand 9-8 in the 2013 final and retain the title. In an event derided by many as a vulgar and ostentatious display of wealth for the benefit of people with more money than sense, sailing savvy and sea smarts will only get you so far unless you have a suitably fast vessel.
Often likened to Formula One on water, the America’s Cup is as much a fundraising and constructors’ championship as it is a series of races. To compete this year, Ainslie had to scare up the princely sum of £90m to get his challenge off the ground and the chief executive of his team is Martin Whitmarsh, the former team principal of the McLaren Mercedes Formula One team.
Ainslie is not the only British skipper participating in this year’s race and on the opening day he will go head-to-head with his close friend Iain Percy, who leads the challenge of Artemis. The Swedish syndicate overseen by Percy made tragic headlines in the buildup to the last America’s Cup after the devastating loss of a crew member, Andrew “Bart” Simpson, a good friend of both men, in a practice accident.
Originally staged on the waters around the Isle of Wight in 1851, the Auld Mug has come a long way since it was first secured by the schooner America, from which the trophy would take its name. Unrecognisable from the more traditional single-hulled yachts with which the America’s Cup was long associated, the near 50ft foiling, wing-sail catamarans contesting this year’s race are towering miracles of engineering.
Each team have designed their own America’s Cup Class boat, developing their own hydraulic control system, although there are certain “one-design” elements that must be the same across them all. Suitably elevated, the vessels skim along the sea while retaining the ability to turn on the proverbial sixpence without losing speed. Between 1851 and 2007 the top speed of the boats increased from about 12 knots to 18 knots. However, the acceleration in technology is such that in the last 10 years the speed of the boats has increased from 18 knots to just under 50 – so far.
As the defending champion, Oracle Team USA chose the venue for this year’s race and opted for Bermuda’s Great Sound instead of San Francisco, where they won the America’s Cup four years ago. Despite being guaranteed their place in the final, they were still involved in the America’s Cup World Series, a series of international warm-up events won by Ainslie’s team, giving the British a two-point bonus before the serious racing in newly designed boats, which begins imminently.
All six teams – Britain, Japan, USA (Oracle Team USA take part for practice purposes and because the winners of the qualifiers begin the America’s Cup match with a one-point advantage), Sweden, New Zealand, France – must compete in a double round-robin of match races, in which each team races the others twice. The bottom-placed team are eliminated and four challenger teams remain. They will contest semi-finals and a final to see which boat gets to take on Oracle in next month’s final.
If the format seems unnecessarily complicated and biased in favour of “the defender” that is almost certainly because it is. For all that, with its picturesque backdrop of Bermudan waters, constant undercurrent of extreme danger and layer upon layer of personality-driven subplot, this aggressive and high-tech aquatic spectacle ought to make for compelling viewing. “The boats are smaller and faster but we’ve got more cameras on board, drone technology and all the audio,” Ainslie told the Guardian “So it will be an incredible spectacle and one of the closest America’s Cups in history. It has all the ingredients to be the best ever.”
