HERITAGE
The America’s Cup, dating back to 1851, 45 years before the modern Olympic Games, is the oldest sporting trophy in the world. Only four nations have won the trophy: the United States of America, Australia, New Zealand and Switzerland. Intended as a friendly competition between national yacht clubs, the America’s Cup has always reflected the times, and motivated design innovation.
In Victorian times, the schooner America, owned by a syndicate of New York businessmen, crossed the Atlantic to represent the United States at the Great Exhibition in London and to race around the Isle of Wight for the Hundred Guinea Cup. The yacht America won spectacularly, beating a fleet of British yachts on the Solent, and soliciting the famous comment to Queen Victoria at the finish by the signal-master onboard the Victoria & Albert Royal Yacht: “Ah, Your Majesty, there is no second.” This was the start of the America’s Cup and provided the fundamental principles of the event which has since been contested as a duel between a Defender and a Challenger.
The trophy, a silver ewer commissioned by the Royal Yacht Squadron and informally known as the Auld Mug, arrived in the New York Yacht Club in September 1851 and remained there for 132 years. The New Yorkers defended the America’s Cup 24 times, the longest winning streak in any sport. Their dominance came to an end in 1983 when Australia II famously won with a winged keel. The first Challenger to win the America’s Cup in its history took the trophy and the event to Fremantle on the west coast of Australia.
In 1987, Dennis Conner, skipper of Stars and Stripes, returned the trophy to the US, this time to San Diego in California. In 1995, Peter Blake, a sailor renowned for his offshore exploits, led a team of sailors representing the New Zealand Yacht Squadron to victory, returning the America’s Cup trophy to the southern hemisphere, this time to New Zealand. The Kiwis defended the trophy in 2000 but lost it to Switzerland in 2003. Swiss billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli and his Alinghi team returned the Cup to Europe for the first time in 152 years.
The Deed of Gift, the America’s Cup governing document (created in 1857, revised and replaced in 1882, then revised and replaced again with a third Deed in 1887 that has governed all racing for the America’s Cup since) stipulates that a challenger yacht club has to have an annual regatta on the arm or an arm of the sea.
The Swiss hosted and defended the America’s Cup in Valencia, Spain, in 2007, beating the New Zealanders for the second time. There followed a legal battle between Alinghi and Larry Ellison’s American Oracle Racing syndicate which went all the way to the US Supreme Court in New York and ended in a Deed of Gift match between the two teams in Valencia in 2010 raced on multihulls. The Swiss designed a maxi catamaran, Alinghi 5, while the Americans developed a futuristic trimaran, USA17, with a 72m solid wing sail, larger than the wing of an Airbus A380. BMW Oracle Racing won 2-0 for the Golden Gate Yacht Club in San Francisco where the trophy remained until 2017 after an epic defence in 2013.
In 2017, in Bermuda, the America’s Cup was raced on ultra-fast hydrofoil catamarans, the AC45. Team New Zealand, representing the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, won 7-1 against the USA. Monohulls made a return to the America’s Cup in 2021, in the form of the foiling AC75, and the New Zealanders repeated their success, this time against the Italian team Luna Rossa, winning the America’s Cup for a 4th time.
