Apr 25
Bermuda is still in a state of lockdown, although we are allowed out of the house now, but that sadly did not extend to watching the first series of the 2020/21 SailGP held here this weekend.
Although families could go onto the Great Sound to watch in personal boats, the initial plans of a spectator village and stands were all cancelled, and with it millions of dollars into the islands desperately empty tourism coffers.
I’ll be honest, I had grave reservations about Bermuda hosting the 35th Americas Cup. I often have reservations about Bermuda hosting anything, and normally with good reason. Leading up to the first weekend we joked at work that the concrete at the village would still be wet, the ferry’s would go on strike and the food vendors would shut for lunch.
But I couldn’t have been more wrong, Bermuda not only carried off hosting the Americas Cup, they carried it high, and probably head and shoulders higher than any host had carried it before.
It took just 23 minutes this afternoon for Emirates Team New Zealand to win the 35th Americas Cup meaning they will take the Auld Mug, the oldest trophy in world sport back to New Zealand for the first time since 2000.
Ever since Jimmy Spithill and the large contingent of Team Oracle landed in Bermuda over 2 years ago they have talked of bringing the Americas Cup back to the islands of Bermuda if the USA team retain the trophy. The crew, designers, engineers, boat builders, administrators, and a whole range of specialists and back room staff and their families have integrated themselves very well into the fabric of the island.
Without any doubt they have been given every assistance, been allowed to cut corners and slipped rules and legalizations have been amended but, and some locals will argue the opposite, most will belive that Team Oracle has been good for this island, no more so than their inspirational leader Spithill.
This was not the close and exciting Americas Cup Final everyone was hoping for. At least so far. It was men against boys, Chelsea v Charlton. In fact even that analogy doesn’t do justice to how dominate Team Emirates New Zealand were over Team Oracle this past weekend.
Four races, two Saturday, two Sunday, and four comprehensive wins for the Kiwi challengers. Where Jimmy Spithill and Team Oracle go now, who knows.
Spithill and Team Oracle came back once before, big, four years ago in San Francisco, and the only crumb of comfort for the Aussie skipper is that the point they won from winning the qualifiers here, means they trail 3-0 and not 4-0, but Team Oracle is in a hole and four more wins for Peter Burling and his crew means that Emirates will snuffle the oldest trophy in world sports, put in it’s own Louis Vuitton case and ship it back to the Southern Hemisphere.
On Monday in hardly any wind Emirates Team New Zealand finally saw off Team Artemis’ valiant challenge and won the Louis Vuitton America’s Cup Challenger series and a sizeable looking trophy but importantly won the right to go up against the Americas Cup defenders Team Oracle USA, in what will be a repeat of that remarkable final 4 years ago.
After Sunday the Kiwis led the Swedes by 4-2 and required just one more win on Monday. In the first race Artemis appeared to have the edge, but as the wind dropped to a slight breeze both boats became almost stationary in the middle of the Great Sound and when the time limit to finish the race was reached, that race was abandoned.
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So what is happening in the Americas Cup you ask. Well the BBC are covering it quite extensively and it is live on BT Sport as well as NBC Sports. However as you asked I will update you.
Today begins the Challenger Play-Off’s Final, a best of 9 series of races that come Monday will give us the challenger to the defenders Team Oracle.
I spent little time at my desk this week and a lot of time up at the Americas Cup Village in Royal Dockyard, and saw some immense racing in some intense weather conditions.
Tuesday we had our first considerable rainfall for months and the Village resembled a huge wet t-shirt contest as thousands of people watched what five time Olympian Sir Ben Ainslie called “the most exciting, exhilarating day of sailing I’ve ever been involved in”.
No not another ode to Yann or a post on Patrick Bauer’s potential move back to Germany, but more on the Americas Cup which continues to be the talk of the island.
Saturday saw the end of the Round Robin Americas Cup Qualifiers which meant that the French team had to exit the competition. Groupama Team France and Jose Mourinho look-a-like Franck Cammas over acheived and made a lot of friends during their stay here but after eight defeats but two suprising wins, they finished bottom of the 1st Round standings and will play no further part in the 35th Americas Cup. Although Cammas has said the team will stay and provide practice competition for the now idle Team Oracle.
As part of the whole Americas Cup shebang the iconic tall ships are back in Bermuda and twenty or so of these wonderful vessels are moored on Front Street as part of the Tall Ships Festival.
The ships are here as part of the Rendez-Vous 2017 Tall Ships Regatta, a 7,000 nautical mile Trans-Atlantic journey that started on the Thames in Greenwich in April before sailing to Sines in Portugal and now onto Bermuda. After departing Bermuda next week the fleet will race to Boston, then to Canada and Prince Edward Island and Quebec City. Then they race back to Europe to finish the Regatta in Le Havre at the beginning of September.
Shiver me timbers. Sorry that’s a pirate term, but still…. I have been very lucky to attend a lot of the biggest sporting events, and I have to tell you that the opening day of the 35th Americas Cup will join the list of very memorable days out, and up there with the Masters, The Open, Ashes test matches, Wimbledon and Olympic events.
The Americas Cup village, built on land that wasn’t even there a year ago, was immaculate and beautifully presented. More than 10,000 people, a sixth of the island’s population, watched the first day’s sail boat racing from various viewpoints and the excitement was plain to see and hear. In Bermuda election year I just wish the politicians would stop trying to score points off each other, and accept that this little island is going to experience something very special and create memories long lasting over these next 6 weeks.
I can tell that sailing is not what most Charlton fans want to read about on these pages, and I probably never thought I’d be writing about it, but I live on an island and sailing and boats are part and parcel of life in Bermuda, which is why it has been gripped by America’s Cup fever.
I once long ago did a couple of days of Cowes week, which did involve a bit of tacking and luffing, and also with mates we skippered for a few consecutive years a long boat on various canals. But mostly me and boats involve sitting in the sun with my feet dangling over the side holding a cold beer. No more, no less.
One of the last arrivals to Bermuda were the French team Groupama. Team France got here in March and are rank outsiders to win the 35th Americas Cup after finishing a distant last in the preceding World Series event. The team is skippered by 44-year old Frenchman Franck Cammas, who has an impressive sailing CV but will compete in his first ever Americas Cup. Cammas is also an accomplished piano player and skier and has been sailing since he was 10.
Cammas developed the Groupama Team with Michel Desjoyeaux and Olivier de Kersauson in an attempt to take the Americas Cup back to France for the first time.
Kiwi Dean Barker is the team CEO and skipper of SoftBank Team Japan and is competing in his 6th America’s Cup. Five years after making his America’s Cup debut at age of 26 he steered Team New Zealand to victory in 2000. Barker, son of the well-known New Zealand multi-millionaire Ray Barker of the Barkers Clothing retail chain, sailed from an early age, and defected from the New Zealand Team Emirates after a well publicized fall out with the owner to move to the newly founded Japanese syndicate in 2015.
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.
Less than a week until the 35th Americas Cup kicks sails off in Bermuda. In the last week the six teams have been practicing hard out on the Great Sound, against each other and solo.
The experts continue to extol Team Oracle and SoftBank Team Japan’s chances and bash Ben Ainslie’s Land Rover BAR and the apparent hapless Groupama Team France. During the middle of last week the British Olympian collided into the back of the Emirates Team New Zealand causing damage to both boats not pleasing Kiwi helmsman Peter Burling, which led to an online spat.
“We had the leeward end of the line pretty locked down, Ben was quite late and just ran straight into the back of us,” said Burling. “Just unnecessary a week out from the America’s Cup. We are all here to learn and it’s a shame we have a pretty big dent now in the back of our nice boat.” The 45 foot long boats are valued at a cool $10m each.
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Named for a Greek goddess, but based in Sweden at the historic Kungliga Svenska Segel Sällskapet (KSSS – the Royal Swedish Yacht Club), the Artemis team is led by Australian Nathan Outerbridge. A gold medalist at London 2012, Outerbridge was part of Artemis’ challenge in 2013, which ended in both disappointment and tragedy after their main boat capsized in strong winds, resulting in the death of British crewmember Andrew Simpson.
Team captain is two time Olympian Ian Percy, OBE and the rest of the crew is packed with experience amassing 12 America’s Cup campaigns, and having competed in 21 Olympics Games, winning 11 medals, including 7 golds.
Four time Olympic gold medalist Sir Ben Ainslie is possibly the world’s most recognizable face in the world of sailing, and he and his wife, ex-Sky Sports presenter Georgie Thompson, are often been spotted here since moving to Bermuda last year.
Born in Macclesfield to a sailing family Ben won Olympic medals at five consecutive Olympic Games and has reams of world sailing titles and was instrumental in Team Oracle winning the 2013 Americas Cup. Oracle recruited Ainslie as the crew’s chief tactician with the team losing 5-0 to Emirates Team New Zealand. Spithill, Ainslie, Slingsby and others then turned around the deficit to eventually win 9-8 after being 1-8 down.
The American host team and winners of the ‘Auld Mug in Valencia in 2010 and San Francisco in 2013. Owned by one of the world’s richest men Larry Ellison, Bermuda was chosen as the venue for the American’s to retain the trophy they have won 31 times. It is also expected that if Oracle were to pervail then Ellison would keep the team base in Bermuda, which would be good news for the island.
The co-founder of Oracle which he began with $1,200 of his own money, Larry Ellison is the 7th richest man in the world with a fortune said to now exceed $55bn. The 72-year old remains Executive Chairman of Oracle but mostly now spends his time on his expensive passion’s for yachting, tennis, flying, real estate and young girlfriends. It is also said that he has given at least $150m away to charities. Ellison’s yacht Musashi is expected to be arriving in Bermuda any day.
The Americas Cup, first contested in 1851, 45 years before the modern day Olympics, is the world’s oldest international sporting competition. In August 1851 an upstart crew from the United States swept past the royal yacht on a race around the Isle of Wight and won the £100 prize and the Americas Cup was born. Named not for the nationality of the victors, but after the name of the winning boat.
The prize was taken back to the New York Yacht Club, where the 100 ft schooner called America and it’s crew hailed from and it was to be well over a century before the United States were to lose the trophy. That was in 1983 when after a 132-year winning streak the Australian’s finally cracked it and took the Americas Cup down under.
The American’s won it back 4 years later, although New Zealand have won it twice in recent decades as have, in a huge turn up for the books, land-locked Switzerland in 2003 and 2007.
I have now lived in Bermuda over 7 years, 2 more than I lived in Chicago, which every time I think about it just sounds more incomprehensible. Chicago was a place where everyday I experienced something new. I never found a routine because the city would always throw up alternatives.
Bermuda is not like that, little changes apart from the tide of the sapphire blue Atlantic Ocean. However this year the island finally appeared to come out of the other side of a tough recession and there is a very noticeable wind of optimism coming in with that tide.
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Ever since the 2017 America’s Cup was awarded to Bermuda last December the buzz has gradually built into a crescendo. There has been a real feel good atmosphere around the island supressing the negativity of poor economic conditions, the countries debt and record unemployment.
However the 2017 America’s Cup has already seen some green shoots of recovery with new hotels under, or ready to start, construction and hundreds of competitors and their families already living here and bringing a boost to the island’s economy.
This weekend the island, particularly the capital Hamilton was fully decked out to celebrate the The Louis Vuitton America’s Cup World Series. This is a qualifying race for the main event in two years time.
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The Americas Cup, the world’s oldest competitive sporting trophy and pre-eminent sailing event was today awarded to Bermuda for the 2017 series.
What this means for the island in terms of economy, tourism and global media spotlight is immeasurable. For the Bermuda tourism industry hosting the Americas Cup will be a game changer with visitors running into tens of thousands, effectively doubling the size of the population for almost a month.
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New York, New York
