THere are the 15 boats that took part in the first race of the Royal Yacht Squadron's 100 Pound Cup in 1851, 14 of them British and one not. Strange is a 101-foot schooner named America, built in New York and brought specifically to show off the prowess of American shipyards. In the words of one writer, it came like a sparrowhawk among a flock of pigeons. Just as every young British sailor learned at the lap of their grandfather, at the end of the 53-mile (98 km) race around the Isle of Wight, when America came into view, Queen Victoria, watching from the Royal Yacht, turned around. There is an anecdote. The signalman asked who was in second place behind him. “Your Majesty, there will be no second chance,” he allegedly retorted to her.
The first race was won by the Americans by 24 minutes, but 200 years later, Britain still fell short of winning the trophy and it was soon renamed in honor of the winner. They haven't had a chance since Sovereign, skipped by Peter Scott, the only son of Antarctic explorer Robert Scott, lost 4-0 to the American yacht Constellation in 1964.
Until now. At 2pm on Saturday, Sir Ben Ainslie will finally lead another bid for the British Cup. His team, Ineos Britannia, beat four other contending teams from Switzerland, Italy, the United States and France in the Challenger Selection Series that concluded last week, leading to a race against defending America's Cup champions Emirates Team New Zealand. obtained the right to participate. . Ainslie and his team have spent tens of thousands of hours and hundreds of millions of pounds just to get this far. Now there are up to 13 races left to decide if it was all worth it. 1st to 7th place wins.
“This is a really proud moment for us,” Ainslie said Friday. “We've been trying to get to this final for 10 years, so what an opportunity this is. We're going to give it everything we've got.” Ainsley, 47, has already won almost every league in his sport. We are winning. He is the most successful sailor in Olympic history, winning 11 world championship titles and winning the America's Cup in 2013 as a tactician for Oracle Team USA. But this is England's chance to become the first captain to win the Cup. , became his Moby Dick. He spent 10 years pursuing it. His backer, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, has so far committed well over £100m.
“Why?” Ainsley said, eyeing the trophy affectionately known as “Old Mug.” “That speaks for itself, doesn't it? Britain is a very proud sporting nation and has a very proud maritime history, but this Cup is the one thing that's missing. That's why. Britain What drives us is the fact that we have never won an America's Cup.”
Ainslie describes it as the toughest challenge in the sport. New Zealand, led by captain Peter Burling, had won the previous two competitions and, as defending champions, had the right to dictate the terms and conditions of the latest contest. In addition, Ainsley and his crew have spent the past three weeks competing in a series of grueling races against other challengers, while the New Zealanders have been observing and practicing their boats. They have had plenty of opportunities to study Ainslie's strategy and Ineos Britannia's strengths and weaknesses on the water, but Ineos Britannia has no idea what form Emirates New Zealand will take.
“In terms of who has the advantage, I think it's definitely Team New Zealand,” Ainslie said. “They were able to spend two to three weeks working on the configuration of the boat and getting data on competing boats, given that we have a team here that really knows this sport well. , it's not us, it's Team NZ, that's what we're up against, but we've won a great final and we're gearing up for the next one. is the game.”
Ainslie's co-commander Dylan Fletcher described Ineos Britannia as “pretty broken and battered” after the final qualifying race against Italian team Luna Rossa. But on Friday, Fletcher said: “It was exactly what we needed to prepare for the Kiwi game.”
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The British team has two aces. One is in their back room. All data from their boats is fed back to the analysis team at the Mercedes F1 factory in Brackley, where analysts work in real time. The tweaks they've made to the boat's configuration mean it only gets faster from one race to the next.
New Zealanders would do the same, but they don't have all the F1 expertise to draw on. Another card for Ineos Britannia is Ainsley himself, who has more match racing experience than Birling. The comparison doesn't particularly bother Birling, who has a laconic personality. They said similar things about contests with Jimmy Spithill, another great match racer, in 2017 and 2021, with Burling winning both.
Still, despite the radically different hulls, these two boats are expected to compete more evenly. So the cup race will probably come down to which of the two skippers can outsmart the other before the start. The America's Cup is very different from the kind of dinghy boats Ainsley started out on. Ainslie himself says that these AC75 yachts operate almost on push-button technology, taking the sport to the point of almost over-reliance on automation. And the human element is “not as important as it should be.” But you can still feel the two boats competing for the best position for the race, especially before the start. “At the end of the day, it's the start that decides the race,” says Burling's co-conductor Nathan Outteridge.
And in the end, it will be memorable.
