The World’s Oldest International Sporting Event is a Billionaire-dominated Sport

This event precedes the origins of the modern Olympic movement (1896) by almost four decades.? It is the longest running international sporting event by virtue of being continuously staged since 1851 and the first one was witnessed by the then Queen Victoria.? It is also a sport where the entry ticket to participate can go up to US$300 million - that is how much individual teams spend, and hence a sport primarily for the ultra rich.??

The event is called America’s Cup - and it is not named after the country, but rather the first yacht America that won in this event.? Like my article on Formula 1 racing, it is an event marked by technology, money and big egos!

Over the years, a combination of technological advancements, strategic shifts in competition format, and the involvement of charismatic figures has propelled the America’s Cup into a premier international sporting event.??

This is a story of how a few men led this transformation, and their passion for winning.

Origins

The first of this event was organised as a result of an invitation in 1851 by the Royal Yacht Squadron, a private club (which still exists) that is based on the British Isle of Wight (off the coast of England), to the New York Yacht Club (set up in New York, but now based in Rhode Island and also still exists) to participate in a race against 15 of its member’s yachts.? The winner’s trophy is now called the America’s Cup, and colloquially the Auld Mug, and was made in 1848.

The Americans participated in the form of their yacht, the America, and won the 53-mile (85 km) regatta around the island.? Thereafter they took the Auld Mug back to New York and entered into a Deed of Gift in 1852 that to this day forms the rules of a friendly competition between nations.

The yacht America

The origins of the yacht are interesting only because that may provide a clue as to why it won.? It was built in a shipyard in New York, but the design incorporated characteristics of a pilot’s boat.? At that time the business of piloting incoming and outgoing ships into New York harbour was very competitive, and the boats that got to incoming ships first got the business.? So being fast and nimble was a big part of their modus operandi and thus influenced ship design.

The yacht cost US$30,000 then (~US$1.1 million now) and was funded by a NYYC syndicate led by member, John Cox Stevens.??

John Stevens

John was a member of the family that ran one of the first steamboat services between Hoboken (New Jersey) to New York across the Hudson river.? He was also a founding member of the NYYC.? He was responsible for setting out the Deed of the Gift and its terms.

The Deed of the Gift

This document, modified over time, laid out the rules of a friendly competition amongst nations.? Some of its rules were:

• a challenger’s yacht may not exceed the size of the defending boat
• the challenger boat should arrive at the NYYC location on its own bottom (i.e not shipped or towed there) - something that was later eliminated
• challengers race amongst themselves first to determine a winner (now known as the Louis Vuitton Cup after its sponsor), who then races the challenger yacht
• the design and construction of the boat had to be carried out entirely in the country presenting the challenge (this was subsequently modified)
• the defender decides the location of the next race and the design elements of the boats
• the race has to be on an ocean (i.e versus a lake or a bay)
• Finally, it specified that the winner of the race would have the privilege of possession of the Auld Mug.

The Race Itself

As the Deed of the Gift specifies, the race is between the previous winner yacht and a challenger yacht.? It takes place every three/four years.? NYYC was able to win the race continuously from 1853 to 1983 when it lost to the Australian Royal Perth Yacht Club’s yacht.? Since then the trophy has also been won by teams from Italy, Switzerland, and New Zealand (the current defenders).

The Crew

An America’s Cup yacht sports eight crewmembers - four ‘cyclors’ (a portmanteau of words, cyclist and sailor) who help put up and pull down the various sails, two trimmers, and two helmsman (one on either side since they each have a massive blind spot because of the sails),?

There was footage of wind-swept young men scampering around a heaving deck, winches turned by people whose arms rotated so fast it seemed they were going to fall off. As the boats changed direction, you could see a flurry of activity as sails were manually trimmed and adjusted, or changed and raised and lowered, all by the wind-swept guys we saw earlier.

The skippers would bark orders on instructions received from the tactician/navigator, and sometimes to ensure the other boat could not pass, the same wind-swept men who have done so much already would be required to change course 20 or 30 times in a single 20 or 30 minute leg of the course.

Real sailing, in real boats by real hardworking wind-swept men, who had been funded by an ego-centric entrepreneur, for their own self-esteem, sure, but also for the pride of winning for their country.

Subsequently, sailors like Larry Ellison changed this dynamic by introducing scientific disciplines of hydro-dynamics to the design and computers to navigation thus destroying, according to some sailing purists, the human element of the sport.

The Challengers

The prestige of possessing the Auld Mug has attracted a lot of interesting people (mostly millionaires (a hundred years ago) and billionaires) to fund the teams that race in this event.?

Sir Thomas Johnston Lipton

He was an English businessman with interests in the grocery (yes, he was the founder of the Lipton Tea company) and pork-packing business, who also had business interests in America.?

At the tender age of 15 and with the princely sum of just $8 in his pocket, Thomas Johnstone Lipton had arrived in New York, fleeing family and wider social poverty in Glasgow, in 1865.? It was a time, just after the American Civil War had ended, where employment was scarce as returning servicemen took any job available.? In his hunt for work, Lipton scoured the Americas.? His face was slashed by a knife-wielding Spaniard in the Carolinas and his itinerant life in America saw him work in the rice-fields of South Carolina, as a car salesman in New Orleans, as a plantation bookkeeper in Virginia and even as a fireman in Charleston.? After six years of struggle, he returned to the family grocery store business in Glasgow and with a few shrewd moves expanded it to 20 branded stores and by the late 1880’s this had mushroomed to over 200 retail stores.

In 1899 he funded the construction of the yacht, Shamrock, as a challenger to the NYYC’s dominance with up to US$250,000 (inflation-adjusted US$9.5 million in 2024 terms) under the aegis of the Royal Ulster Yacht Club.? It was one of the first yachts to use alloyed aluminum topside (to reduce weight) and featured a manganese-bronze coated hull to prevent barnacles and other sea creatures from sticking to it.? Sir Lipton so badly wanted to take the Auld Mug home to England that he financed five attempts until 1930.

John Pierpont Morgan

Sir Lipton’s competitor, the defender yacht Columbia was funded by none other than the founder of the current J P Morgan Chase bank, John Pierpoint Morgan, who was a millionaire investment banker at that time who is estimated to have spent a similar sum on its construction.

These two yachts met in the New York harbour in October 1899, and the winner was the Columbia.? Not dejected, Sir Lipton funded five more such challenges until 1930, unfortunately losing all of them.? His challenge that the event was stacked in favour of the defender by virtue of the challenger vessel having to be built sturdier (and hence heavier) to withstand the Atlantic crossing to arrive in New York eventually resulted in that condition being eventually removed from the Deed of the Gift rules.

Harold Starling Vanderbilt

Scion of the famous and vast Vanderbilt railroad fortune (his grandfather cornered the railroad business around New York and was worth an estimated US$100 million in 1877 - almost equal to US$200 billion today).? Harold was a yachtsman who funded the development of the yacht, Enterprise, for the 1930 race.? His team pioneered various techniques like specific placement of crewmen (who for the first time wore numbers on the back of their uniforms) during various stages of the race to maximise weight balancing and efficiency.? In that race of September 1930, the Enterprise won against Sir Lipton’s final challenger yacht, the Shamrock V.

Alan Bond

This England-born Australian millionaire businessman, who began his career there as a house painter, picked up the gauntlet of dethroning the NYYC of its possession of the Auld Mug since 1851 and funded his first challenge in 1974.? His yacht, Southern Cross, won the challenger trial but lost to the defender.? Undeterred, Alan returned again in 1977 and 1980, each time winning the challenger trial but losing to the defender.???

Most people would have given up at this point, but taking the mantle of Sir Lipton, Alan persisted in 1983 with his controversial winged-keel yacht (the winged-keel, which are small winglets attached to the bottom of the boat, works best when sailing upwind where stability and the ability to produce side force creates a speed advantage and greater efficiency), Australia II, which finally dethroned the defender yacht, Liberty, giving Alan a place in the history books.? The winged-keel technology was tested in a Dutch naval test tank which broke the rules.

Asked to explain why the America's Cup means so much to him, Alan Bond said this:

You get out there and you're as good as the next guy who might be a Vanderbilt. You get out there and all you've got is a common element - the wind and the sea - and everybody's equal.

Larry Ellison

Larry was the mercurial billionaire founder of the database software firm, Oracle.? He resurrected the Golden Gate Yacht Club and funded the 2003 attempt to wrestle the Auld Mug back from the Swiss - he did not succeed.? However, he persisted and won in the 2007 event and held the Auld Mug until 2017 when they lost it to the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron.??

Larry also pushed the event into changes like:

• Use of technology like carbon fibre in the hull and radically changing the shape of the boats using hydro-dynamics and computer-guided design.? His teams would compete in AC72 type boats versus the traditional sailing catamarans (since the defender sets the rules), which look more like Michael Bay's Transformers than a sailboat - these were designed by hydro dynamics engineers and run by computer programmed navigation.
• Converting the event into a spectator sport (meaning televised sport) he created an entity, SailGP, to make that happen.??
• Holding the event in the San Francisco Bay (versus Rhode Island). He also created lead-in races that allowed more televised races and the consequent sponsorship opportunities.??
• The faster and lighter yachts meant that they could be raced more in-land than previously, thus making for more exciting onshore spectator viewing.

But his Oracle team has been involved in controversies like in 2013 when their boats were discovered to have illegal weights and resulted in two crew members being removed.

When Charlie Rose asked Oracle CTO and former CEO Larry Ellison in 2014 why he had to win the America's Cup yacht race for the second time in a row, Ellison replied,?

It's funny, because I realized after losing twice that my personality wouldn't allow me to quit while losing. And then after winning the America's Cup, I discovered my personality doesn't allow me to quit while winning! I don't smoke, but I do sail.

2024 America's Cup

The 2024 event took place in Barcelona, Spain and sported the new AC75 type boats which look again radically different from the AC72 type boats.

The event was won by Taihoro, the yacht from the defender Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron which has now held the Auld Mug since 2017.

Sources:

Fisher, Daniel. Winging It: How Larry Ellison Harnessed Big Data To Win The America's Cup Forbes, June 2014

Swintal, Diane. Winging It: ORACLE TEAM USA's Incredible Comeback to Defend the America's Cup Ragged Mountain Press, 2013

Cohen, Ronnie. Oracle hit with unprecedented penalties for America's Cup cheating Reuters, September 2013