Sailing’s very own ubermensch Sir Ben Ainslie has every right to be considered the world’s most competitive bloke. Those who knew him as a teenager say he always had just two ambitions: to bag a sackful of Olympic medals, and to win the America’s Cup for Britain. Well he didn’t have much trouble becoming the most successful sailor in Olympic history, with four golds and a silver. The America’s Cup, however – the ultimate challenge for yacht-racers – is proving a bit trickier.
The America’s Cup is pursued by some of the planet’s most steely-eyed sportsmen
You might think this is a preposterous event, bearing little relationship to anything you or I might mean by the word ‘boats’ or ‘sailing’ and pursued by very rich men for indeterminate reasons. Well, there’s some truth in that: it certainly hasn’t much in common with the red-trouser brigades of Cowes or Salcombe. But this is far from the whole story. This is savagely competitive racing, pursued by some of the planet’s most steely-eyed sportsmen, whose futuristic boats reach over 45mph in winds of seven knots. It’s Formula 1 – but at sea.
Do have a glance at the excellent coverage on TNT Sports if you can’t make it out to Barcelona, where the 37th edition of the oldest international competition in any sport is currently being duked out between Team New Zealand and Ainslie’s Britannia. It is a brilliant spectacle: fast, colourful, dramatic and TV-friendly. You also get the chance to hear Ainslie describe a Kiwi commentator who had annoyed him in the most colourful terms.
Currently, Britain’s top yachtie and his team have no answer to the Kiwis, whose superior racing skills have enabled them to build a lead that looks hard to overturn. But not impossible. And he’s done it before. Ainslie was part of the team called off the bench to rescue Team USA when it had gone 8-1 down to New Zealand in 2013. America eventually won 9-8.
The billionaire in that race was Larry Ellison of Oracle, who was behind Team USA. This year it’s Sir Jim Ratcliffe of Ineos, who has sunk about £200 million into Britannia. As I write, Ainslie is 4-0 down in a first to seven contest. It’s looking ominous but there’s still some way to go.
Ineos have a mixed record in the huge number of sports they’re involved in, from F1 (it has a one-third share of Mercedes) to cycling (the once all-conquering Team Sky turned into Ineos Grenadiers but haven’t won a thing since) and rugby union (the Ineos All Blacks are not quite the world beaters they once were). There’s also, of course, football, where the problems of Ratcliffe’s Manchester United have become a fixture of British life. He appears to be running the club like a failing prep school, sacking the junior staff while not tackling the problems at the top.
Ainslie has said he’s in it for the long haul, as has Ratcliffe. But by the next America’s Cup in 2027 Ainslie will be 50, and this level of sailing is a young man’s sport. Against him in Barcelona is the New Zealander Peter Burling, whose nickname is ‘Pistol’ and who has the demeanour and steel of a Battle of Britain pilot – appropriately enough, because this is a dogfight, except fought on the sea rather than over the skies of England. Burling is not someone to take lightly.
And vitally, in a sport where races are won and lost on tiny margins, the New Zealanders have the world’s outstanding yacht designer on their side. Daniel Bernasconi is a Brit, born in Warwickshire, who graduated from Cambridge with a masters in engineering. He has worked for the F1 team McLaren and it can safely be said that what he doesn’t know about yacht and hydrofoil design isn’t worth knowing. Ratcliffe would love to have him, but Bernasconi is happy in New Zealand. The boats he designed won the America’s Cup in 2017 and 2021. Can he do the same in 2024? Ainslie will be trying to make sure he can’t.
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