Cup Fuckery...

Challenger?

From Sailing Anarchy

It’s been the same silly ritual every time since 1987. Within seconds of the finish of the final America’s Cup race, documents are signed and a there’s a flurry of breathless media releases announcing the details of the next challenge. 

We now know that the Challenger of Record for AC37 will be Royal Yacht Squadron Racing, a corporate vehicle created by the Royal Yacht Squadron to protect the UK club’s members from liability if any financial disasters flow from their challenge. (Surely that’s an indicator, in itself, that the Cup has grown too large, complex and expensive and has become a distorted expression of its original sporting intent.) 

 But what we don’t know is how many races there will be, or even where the event will be held. 

Now that the Cup is a free-standing commercial entity it’s location can be sold to the highest bidder – usually a city that falls for the shopworn old sales pitch that hosting the event will attract world attention and billions of tourist dollars. The NZ government has already slammed down $5m just to keep the ETNZ team together, yet there’s no guarantee the next Cup will be sailed in Auckland.  

The new “Challenger of Record” is, in truth, the giant INEOS chemicals conglomerate. But by using the RYS as their proxy, Monaco-based squillionaire Sir James Ratcliffe’s corporation complies with the Deed of Gift provisions. DoG challenges have, in recent times, produced some bizarre best-of-three-race series, notably San Diego 1988 and Valencia 2010. 

For their part, the defenders, Emirates Team New Zealand (sponsored by that well-known Kiwi company Emirates Airlines of Dubai), have issued a media release distinguished by its surprisingly defensive tone. It is as if the winners are keen to demonstrate that they have listened to the persistent critics of what the America’s Cup has become.

While the current AC75 class will remain for the next two series (although that could change if NZ loses in 2024), each syndicate will be restricted to one new boat. This is explained as a gesture aimed at reducing costs. That’s an admirable goal, yet it has never been achieved since the Cup downsized from J-boats to 12 metres after WWII. The costs have kept rising for every new challenge and defense.

In the face of that reality, the ETNZ media release includes this pious promise: 

“The Defender and the Challenger of Record, will be investigating and agreeing a meaningful package of campaign cost reduction measures including measures to attract a higher number of Challengers and to assist with the establishment of new teams.” 

Don’t, for a moment, believe them. Whatever that “meaningful package” may be, the total real cost of any serious campaign will still be North of $150m. There is a similar attempt to mollify those who regret that the America’s Cup has lost its original nation v. nation spirit. Here’s the proposed restriction: 

“A new Crew Nationality Rule will require 100% of the race crew for each competitor to either be a passport holder of the country the team’s yacht club as at 19 March 2021 or to have been physically present in that country (or, acting on behalf of such yacht club in Auckland, the venue of the AC36 Events) for two of the previous three years prior to 18 March 2021.”  

There’s unlikely to be a mad scramble to the passport office. The rule essentially allows anyone to crew who is a national of the challenging or defending club, or has done two years of residency, or has been part of the series just concluded in Auckland. In other words, it protects the same few hired guns of the elite professional sailing community who have made the Cup their honey pot for the past decade. 

(Meanwhile, there is apparently to be no restriction on the nationality of the people who now contribute far more than the crew to the success or failure of any campaign: the designers, programmers, builders, engineers, coaches, trainers and sail-makers.)

But enough of all this foreplay. We know from experience that the syndicates will bend or re-write the rules between now and AC37 to suit their interests or diminish any perceived advantage for their rivals. It’s the America’s Cup, after all. 

What interests ordinary sailors more is how the actual racing could be improved. Here are a few observations prompted by watching the ten recent races in Auckland:

First, kudos are due to New Zealand for staging the Cup so successfully under such difficult, COVID circumstances. The race management (with one unfortunate exception, which we’ll come to later) was flawless and, by all accounts, the on-shore experience for the fans met expectations despite the virus.