Americas Cup 2017 teams – Emirates Team New Zealand

Considered to be the biggest challengers to Team Oracle, Team New Zealand came within one win of taking the America’s Cup home in 2013. After blasting their way through the Challengers’ elimination series, and after leading by a mile in the Final challenge the Kiwi’s finished on the wrong side of one of the greatest comebacks in all of sport.

Now under Glenn Ashby they are out to avenge their infamous capitulation. Based in Auckland, Team New Zealand has become a household name in their home country following their consecutive wins in the America’s Cup in 1995 and 2000. In doing this, they became the first team from a country outside the United States to win and successfully defend the America’s Cup.

Whilst Ashby is skipper, it is 26-year old Peter Burling who is helmsman. Burling won a gold medal at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio and at the age of just 21 won a silver medal at the 2012 London Summer Olympics. Burling started sailing in the Welcome Bay estuary near his home in Tauranga, New Zealand, at the age of six in an old wooden optimist called Jellytip. At the age of eight, he joined Tauranga Yacht Club and started competing nationally.

The money man behind the Emirates Team is Matteo de Nora, the mysterious Swiss-Italian who has poured millions into Team NZ, and once again the Monaco-based de Nora is on board for the 2017 challenge financially backing the NZ bid to take the 35th Americas Cup back to the Southern Hemisphere.

The Emirates Team NZ were the last team to arrive in Bermuda, just last month and have built a reputation as an outlander refusing to comply with rule tweaks and alienating the other teams. They will be hoping that as interlopers they can wrestle the ‘Auld Mug’ off the Americans, an achievement that they came so close to 4 years ago.

Emirates website

Team profiles

Major sponsors: Emirates, Omega, Toyota, Nespresso

Odds: 4/1