LINING UP FOR THE CUP
We’re just past the halfway stage between the end of the last Cup in Bermuda 2017 and the next America’s Cup in Auckland at the start of 2021. Although the giant AC75s were permitted to start sailing at the start of April 2019, that date has come and gone with no sign of a 75-footer getting wet any time soon. All in all, this is a much quieter America’s Cup than we’ve seen over the past 15 years or so since Alinghi took the Cup away from Auckland in 2003.
Traditionally the Cup was always conducted behind closed doors, with teams looking to protect every technical advantage from prying eyes. Then Alinghi heralded in a new era of open competition, the so-called Louis Vuitton Acts – a travelling circuit of events that took the teams around Europe before the showdown in Valencia 2007. When BMW Oracle Racing won the Cup in 2010, Russell Coutts instigated his own version of the travelling circus with the America’s Cup World Series which took place in AC45 catamarans, mini versions of the AC72s that would contest the main event in San Francisco 2013. Suddenly the Cup was a lot more visible, less secretive.
With the substantial backing of uber-tycoon Larry Ellison, Coutts’ desire and drive was to put the Cup on a commercially sustainable footing, so the focus became mass publicity and mind-blowing live TV coverage. The coverage of the racing in San Francisco and Bermuda was a
