Beat By Beat: Why The America’s Cup Matters
‘Hey, forget the Warriors! Switch channels, the America’s Cup is on!’ How often have you heard that refrain? Surprisingly often if you frequent the kinds of bars I do – and especially at the moment while the Cup is on.
Now, while being able to forget the Warriors would ease a huge burden of pain in my life, I honestly never thought that America’s Cup sailors would replace them as blue collar heroes. It’s such a bizarre concept, it does my head in to be frank. It would be like some failed businessman-cum-TV star somehow becoming the saviour of working-class America and being voted in President…
Whoops! Okay, so stranger things have happened than the Hi Viz brigade cheering on millionaire sportsmen – after all, every week crowds flock to watch the players at Liverpool FC, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Delhi Daredevils strut their stuff whilst earning more in a week than their fans would in a lifetime. So there’s nothing new under the sun there.
But… yachting?? Really? Why on earth should we care? And is there any point in training ourselves to get excited about it?
Behind the Start Line
Initially there aren’t many clues as to why we should give a stuff when you look back through the origins of the America’s Cup. As it all plays out exactly how our pre-conceived ideas about yachting expected it to. The whole thing started way back in 1851 when some American gentlemen of leisure grew bored of sipping champagne and fancied a trip across the Atlantic to race their yacht against the British just for a lark. And, just in case no one recognised their accents or devil-may-care attitude, they christened their yacht America. Turns out they were pretty good sailors though as they beat the Brits on their own surf and snatched the trophy from under Queen Victoria’s very unamused nose.
But things start getting interesting once the victorious America syndicate finished their months of partying and eventually returned home. Here, they sobered up and got all reflective and Utopian, deciding to rename the trophy they’d won as America’s Cup and to donate it to the New York Yacht Club. They even wrote up a Deed of Gift that the Cup was to be put up as a challenge trophy to ‘promote friendly competition among nations’.
Now while it’s easy to scoff about the subsequent lack of ‘friendliness’ in the America’s Cup ever since, but when you consider the times this Deed of Gift was written, you really realise just how far-sighted and innovative it was. Which set a tone for the sport which has continued to this very day.
For example, ‘nations’ didn’t really exist in 1851 as the majority of the world had been carved up into empires. So New Zealand and Australia were mere colonies of the British Empire then and Europe featured Austrian, Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman Empires as well as an intimidating Germanic country called Prussia. Even the USA only had 31 states with California having just joined the previous year. And any ‘competition’ between these empires was inevitably of the military kind with a famous one just around the corner in 1854 Crimea where the Light Brigade made their ridiculously suicidal charge.
Sporting-wise there was nothing even vaguely resembling a ‘national’ competition yet with one of the earliest; the English football league still yonks off as it wouldn’t kick off until 1888. Even boxing and/or martial arts competitions were largely localised affairs with little inter-national contact unless some Johnny Foreigner wandered into town and was ‘encouraged’ to fight. So the very concept of putting up a challenge trophy for individual nations to compete for in a non-violent manner was way, way, way ahead of its time.
All the same, no one really cared for decades and decades as the only people who could afford to take time off work to build and sail boats in those days were people who didn’t have to work at all. Therefore, the America’s Cup became the preserve of famous rich aristocratic people like; Sir James Lipton; Sir Thomas Sopwith; Harold Vanderbilt; and Ted Turner. And to non-sailors this meant the America’s Cup was nothing more than some sort of obscure gentlemanly amusement, occurring sometime between fox hunts and polo chukkas and involving lots of caviar and cucumber sandwich munching.
Who says it’s America’s Cup?
But all that changed for us Kiwis once the Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi! hooligans gatecrashed the existing genteel cross-Atlantic garden party with Australia II back in 1983. Bankrolled by Alan Bond, the Australia II team he assembled was a blueprint for success for both wresting the Cup out of reluctant American hands in ’83 – and for sailing countries like New Zealand to emulate in future years.
First; there was Bond himself, arrogant and obnoxious enough to fight back publicly against the condescending Yanks (of vital importance considering the inevitable claims of cheating to come); a successful Olympic sailor in John Bertrand at the helm; a master boat designer in Ben Lexcen in the backroom; a simple-yet-memorable cute mascot in the boxing kangaroo to win the public over and; most importantly, a technological advance in its ‘winged keel’. They also had an unofficial ‘anthem’ in Down Under by Men at Work which, after hearing close to 4,000 times throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, still makes me involuntarily punch through steel as soon as I hear those hateful opening notes, played on empty bottles – of all things!
Lexcen’s rationale for his radical keel design was that the defending team of skipper Dennis Conner and his sailing cronies were so experienced in the winning of the America’s Cup both on and off the water, Australia II would need something exceptional onboard to neutralise the Americans’ home advantage. Lexcen discovered that by putting wings or fins on his keel, he could help the boat’s stability and speed on the upwind legs, but slow it downwind slightly due to the extra area of drag underwater. It turned out that the benefits upwind far outweighed this downwind drag, as Australia II quickly became the boat to beat. And the fact that the keel wore a ‘skirt’ whenever Australia II was out of the water only added to the invincibility mystique – and sense of inevitability that the Ockers were actually going to snatch the Cup.
Cue the protests of cheating from the Americans: Australia II is not a proper 12 metre boat – that winged keel is illegal – it wasn’t even designed by an Australian but by some Dutch dude years ago – etc etc. But all to no avail as Australia II triumphed and the America’s Cup belonged to America no more. Heady days Down Under!
Across the Tasman in Godzone, a lot of people took notice of this seismic shift in sailing power but perhaps none more so than a certain Sir Michael Fay of merchant bankers/corporate raiders, Fay & Richwhite. Fay definitely saw the potential for a Kiwi challenge as, like Australia, New Zealand was surrounded by water, had heaps of aquatic sports and a bunch of salts who went out sailing whenever they could. Some of them were even pretty good, winning Olympic medals and chasing adventure on board yachts in events like the Whitbread Around the World Race. Names like Digby Taylor, Sir Peter Blake, Grant Dalton and Tom Schnackenberg were not only known in New Zealand, but around global sailing circles too.
So Sir Michael started putting a team together: in Chris Dickson he had a helmsman with Olympic and Whitbread experience, a master boat designer Bruce Farr in the backroom, a cute mascot in Kiwi Magic to win over the public; and a technological advance in a lightweight fiberglass hull. Sir Michael even had an unofficial anthem in Sailing Away (All of Us) featuring an eclectic bunch of singers in Dave Dobbyn, Billy T, Annie Crummer, Bunny Walters and Tim Finn – although I’m still scratching my head as to why Grizz Wylie, Jeremy Coney and Dougal Stevenson were in there too.
So, Sir Michael’s plans were terrific – he’d followed the Australia II blueprint to the letter! Surely the Cup was ours for the taking!
But there was only one problem; in order to get a chance to muscle in on winning the America’s Cup, he had to get past a certain American dude first…
Dennis Conner vs New Zealand
Dennis Conner was a pretty good sailor – he’s both won and lost the America’s Cup – and he also played a very convincing bad guy. With the perennial smirk on his face that represented both the success of winning the Cup four times (in ’74, ‘80, ’87 and 88) as well as masking the defensive frailities that come with being; The Jerk Who Lost Our Goddammed America’s Cup, You Know For The First Time In 126 YEARS! Conner became Mr America’s Cup. He also became the face of the more juvenile side of yacht racing – where millionaires used to getting their own way 24/7, throw tantrums when someone dares to say ‘no’ to them. At least he was until his countryman; the ORACLE turned up in more recent times.
Desperate to win back the Cup he’d lost in 1983, Conner found himself up against the Kiwis’ KZ7 entry in the final of the 1987 Louis Vuitton Challenger Series. Intimidated by the speed and maneuverability of KZ7, Conner tossed his toys over its ‘Plastic Fantastic’ fiberglass hull despite two sets of judges approving the manufacture. Conveniently forgetting all the rule-tweaks and loophole-barging his countrymen had employed over the 126 years the USA had held the Cup – when these changes were termed merely ‘innovation’ – Conner accused the Kiwis of ‘cheating’ by creating a hull that wasn’t made of old hat aluminum like everyone else’s. ‘Dirty Den’ was born overnight for the New Zealand public, but we were going to have to wait for our vengeance as the uber-crafty Conner’s Stars & Stripes made mincemeat of both KZ7 in the Louis Vuitton Final and Australia’s Kookaburra III in the challenge proper. Incredibly, Dennis Conner had now won, lost and won the Cup.
What followed was arguably the nadir of the America’s Cup as the two spoiled brat millionaire/yachtsmen/businessmen Fay and Conner traded insults, theatrical stunts and lawsuits over the next few years. Sir Michael Fay kicked things off by saying core samples would be taken from KZ7’s hull ‘over my dead body’ then actually lying down in front of the boat in protest once the judges came to take them. Once Conner had won the Cup back off the Aussies, Fay immediately consulted the rulebook and challenged the following year via the Mercury Bay Boating Club. He built KZ1, a massive monohull, for the challenge which Conner countered with a much faster catamaran. The race was as one-sided as you might expect and the Oxford Dictionary had a new entry for ‘farce’.
But Fay wasn’t done yet as he appealed the result to a New York court – with the understatement of the year – that this schemozzle hadn’t been ‘friendly competition among nations’. Amazingly, the court agreed and ordered the America’s Cup to be handed over to New Zealand – but after Dirty Den’s immediate appeal, it was handed straight back. Actual yacht racing was now officially incidental to the real business of deciding the future of the America’s Cup in the courts. Wah wah waaaahh!
The next beat in the miserable saga came when Dennis Conner was invited onto the late Paul Holmes’ debut eponymous prime time TV show. A set up if there ever was one, Holmes baited Conner demanding that he apologise for his earlier ‘cheats’ crack which Conner naturally refused to do. Holmes went on and on with it, leaving the American no choice but to walk off the set. Holmes and his producers were delighted, they now had the promo of promos for their new Holmes show; Dirty Den storming off under their star reporter’s dogged questioning. But the famous America’s Cup was now rolling around in the gutter alongside English football – which was still banned from Europe for hooliganism at the time and had just suffered two appalling mass fatality disasters at Bradford and Hillsborough.
Things didn’t get much better during the next challenge in 1992 as a 4-1 lead for the Kiwis in the Louis Vuitton Final was squandered by a successful Italian challenge to NZL20’s bowsprit. Unbelievably, removing the offending bowsprit seemed to also remove the Kiwis’ will to win as they simply surrendered the remaining races to Il Moro di Venezia who then went on to lose the America’s Cup challenge against America3.
Enter Team New Zealand
Sensing it was time for a change, the litigious and ultra combative Sir Michael Fay was shouldered aside and in 1993, a phoenix arose from the smouldering ashes of legal briefs. Team New Zealand was its name and its goals were the same, but they’d made a few changes in attitude starting at the top. Partially this was due to circumstance, as over the Tasman, Alan Bond had just been declared bankrupt so having an outrageous, abrasive, high-profile ‘businessman’ as the mouthpiece for your America’s Cup syndicate was kinda uncool now. So Whitbread Around the World supersailor Sir Peter Blake was installed as the new Mr Nice Guy face of the campaign and there were a few personnel changes too. Olympic gold medal winner Russell Coutts came in as skipper as did crafty tactician Brad Butterworth and their boat Black Magic (NZL32) was designed by a fleet of people including old salt Tom Schnackenberg. There was also a new gimmick to keep the public amused as Sir Peter’s wife Pippa had given him a pair of plain red socks which turned out to be his lucky pair as every time he wore them, the team won. And to scientifically confirm this fact; the one race Black Magic lost in 1994, Sir Peter – and his socks – weren’t there! So, picking up on the hint, the whole country got into wearing red socks for the 1995 America’s Cup – and IT WORKED! Black Magic won the America’s Cup because every Kiwi wore socks and poor old Dennis Conner had lost the Cup yet again – maybe someone should have tied it to his wrist or belt.
By now the America’s Cup had transformed so much in Kiwis eyes that it no longer seemed like some sort of obscure billionaire’s leisure pursuit any more, but had magically metamorphised into some sort of David vs Goliath victory of Kiwi Initiative over Wall Street Squillions – which is possibly an even greater feat than actually winning the Cup. If New Zealand had been a Soviet satellite state, the story would’ve been filmed as The Proletariat’s Triumph Over The Decadence Of Capitalism and would be still screening in the Kremlin. Upon arrival back home, the victorious Team New Zealand sailors were treated to a rare ticker tape parade in Auckland, then it was off on a victory lap around the country.
But of course, not everybody was happy about it – or anything else for that matter – as a year later an alleged Māori activist smashed the legendary America’s Cup almost beyond repair when it was on display. In amongst his reasons for committing such an act, he claimed that he did it because Māori wouldn’t see any of the money winning the Cup would generate. He really meant Māori singular as he later tried to sell the sledgehammer he used to break the Cup on Trade Me and flog off his ‘story’ to news media. Top bloke that.
Fortunately the London silversmiths who actually made the Cup in the first place were able to work miracles and restore it completely – and, in a cheeky bird flip to their dastardly American rivals, even took the opportunity to add extra room on the base for more winners’ names.
Then in 2000 we saw the first ever successful defence of the America’s Cup by a non-American nation as the well-oiled Team New Zealand machine calmly disposed of Italian entry Luna Rossa 5-0 in the Hauraki Gulf. TNZ were so confident – or is that contemptuous? – of victory that Russell Coutts handed over the skipper’s cap to the greenhorn Dean Barker for the final race. A dynasty was being planned. Then… the wheels kind of fell off. First, legendary syndicate boss Sir Peter Blake was horrifically murdered while on an environmental mission in the Amazon, then came the Coutts/Butterworth saga.
Reports vary on what really happened but one story has Coutts and Butterworth going to the New Zealand Government looking for money to keep their sailors on board through to the next regatta. The Government hemmed and hawed – but Ernesto Bertarelli appeared with a blank chequebook in hand and so Coutts and Butterworth plus a few other ex-Team New Zealand sailors went to Alinghi, from that hotbed of ocean sailing in landlocked Switzerland. Ironically it had been Team New Zealand, as America’s Cup holder who had changed the rules of eligibility to allow sailors from any nation to compete for any syndicate. How that bit them in the backside!
Public outrage and vitriol spewed forth, especially once Coutts, Butterworth & co – er, I mean Alinghi – took the Cup off us in 2003. Kiwis were incensed that these ‘traitors’ had turned their backs on their own country, conveniently forgetting that they were also the main reason we’d had it in the first place. Worse, all previous America’s Cup sailors would have been more upset that Bertarelli had simply sauntered in and won the Cup at his first attempt – before defending it with ease in 2007. Heck! I thought Brad Butterworth had said the America’s Cup was the ‘Everest’ of sailing? Now it looked more like the Brynderwyns!
2010 saw the infamous ORACLE step in to poach Coutts for his Golden Gate Yacht Club syndicate. Then it was back to the bad old Sir Michael Fay/Dennis Conner days of legal wrangling in New York courts and a subsequent replay of the Mercury Bay private mano-a-mano race-off in Valencia. This time however once the dust settled it was the ORACLE who emerged holding the America’s Cup.
Of course, then came 2013 – and the less said about the result of that the better, although this was the regatta where the super speedy foils were debuted for the first time. Team New Zealand won their way through to challenge Oracle for the America’s Cup, got to match point at 8-1 then in shades of ’92, lost 8 on the trot to surrender their chance for victory. Theories abound as to how the Oracle sailors managed to suddenly turn their fortunes around – but perhaps the best clue was the substitution mid-finals of American tactician John Kostecki for current INEOS Team UK skipper Ben Ainslie. As we’ve seen with the current regatta, Ainslie is some sailor and could easily have proved the difference. Afterwards Team New Zealand boss Grant Dalton and even beaten skipper Dean Barker made no excuses or pointed any fingers – other than alluding that the Americans just took a while to master sailing their potentially faster boat with Barker glumly noting that ‘Oracle just learned to fly the boat well’.
After this debacle Barker was jettisoned as skipper in favour of Australian Glenn Ashby, plus new helmsman Peter Burling and the rest, as they say, is history. In 2017 the Goodies triumphed over evil and New Zealand had the America’s Cup back in Auckland. Russell Coutts and Brad Butterworth were able to come out of hiding and The Proletariat was content once more.
Where to now?
The one really good thing about the America’s Cup syndicates’ obvious penchant for legal battles is that they have created a colossal challenge culture throughout their entire sport. The status quo is never good enough for America’s Cup sailing. If you want to win the Auld Mug you will need to innovate, cheat or at least push the boundaries every single time, otherwise you’ll be left behind crying into your chardonnay about the Good Old Days of pre-12m boat racing. This has led sailing, over time, to become virtually unrecognisable from what it was a century ago. How would America’s original 1851 sailors view the current boats whizzing around today’s courses at 40+ knots and up on foils?
Contrast this with other current popular sports like tennis – which, aside from carbon fibre racquets, new sneakers and no more frilly undies for the ladies, is still the same game as it was in 1901. Or football which is exactly the same as it was in 1902. Ditto golf.
The only other sport that has changed as much as yachting is its original soulmate in haw-haw aristocratic obscurity; cricket. Yet look at what completely reinventing cricket’s staid rules over the decades has done; transformed it into a vibrant, exciting game that has transcended its origins and is now played all over the planet with a fervour that borders on the religious in places as far flung as Afghanistan, Kenya and Bermuda.
This kind of repeated, radical change is not only good but most probably necessary for the survival of the sport – or any sport for that matter going forward. Because, like it or not, an entire generation of youth has grown up with a PlayStation console in their hand rather than a cricket bat, tennis racquet or softball mitt. For them, e-sports are the be all and end all of sport – rugby, league or football mean as little to many of them as handball, sepak takraw or jai alai do to the rest of us. And technology is as much a part of their lives as oxygen or beer.
For this reason, the inclusion of American billionaire Gabe Newell – founder of the Steam game launching platform – into Team New Zealand could be one of the best recruits ever. Sure, Gabe’s got money to throw around which is always useful – but even better, he’s got tech smarts, a massive infrastructure and the ear of today’s youth. With him on board Team New Zealand – and sailing in general – could benefit simply because the America’s Cup fraternity is always open to new ideas. Who knows, in the near future we might see the America’s Cup open up more to the e-sports crowd with kids designing yachts online or even virtual races between actual sailors vs gamers. Maybe even the America’s Cup will be decided one day purely by simulation? It would make a change from a New York courtroom anyway.
For me, the future looks bright. Like a competitive cyclist who’s ridden the majority of the race at the back of the peloton taking it easy in everyone else’s slipstream, the time is right for America’s Cup to now zip out and take the lead. And for New Zealand to benefit most, we need to hang on to the blasted Cup this time. Hopefully Pete, Glenn, Grant and the gang will be able to do the business. Got my red socks on, guys!
The Team Wears: OMEGA Seamaster Planet Ocean 36th America’s Cup Limited Edition
Omega has been sailing aboard Emirates Team New Zealand for 25 years so far and they’re not about to stop now. As Official Timekeeper of the 36th America’s Cup, Omega has played favourites by decking out the team in the OMEGA Seamaster Planet Ocean 36th America’s Cup Limited Edition.
Limited to only 2,021 pieces, this watch is a 43.50 mm timepiece in stainless steel with structured rubber strap and blue ceramic diving bezel, which incorporates a 5-minute countdown for racing.
To commemorate the event a special America’s Cup logo placed on the counterweight of the central seconds hand and transferred on the caseback’s sapphire crystal allows a clear view of OMEGA’s Master Chronometer Calibre 8900. This Calibre features A self-winding movement with Co-Axial escapement, silicon balance spring, automatic winding in both directions and time zone function.
Water resistant up to 60 bar (600 m / 2000 ft), it is robust enough to be the perfect sailing companion. With that said, hopefully its water resistance isn’t something that will need to be shown off this America’s Cup.
Images courtesy of Omega.