You win some and you lose some

Given the extraordinary outcome of the UK’s General Election and the resulting subsequent orgy of punditry and analysis (on which I’d hasten to add I am neither qualified nor willing to pontificate), it is perhaps not quite the fashionable moment for me to emerge from under my rock to crow over my prediction – or rather, that of a veteran sailing neighbour of my father’s which I reported on this website – that Sir Ben Ainslie’s Land Rover BAR quest to win the America’s Cup challenger round in Bermuda was doomed before it began for its boat’s basic lack of speed [‘Wind-blow challenge off course?’ – NR 27^th May 2017].

Rather in the manner of someone who may be technically accurate when replying in the affirmative to a query from a stranger at a cocktail party “Do you play tennis?” … in the sense that occasionally they take to their local public access tennis court sporting ill-fitting garb, two left feet and a total lack of ball-playing coordination … I would probably pass a lie detector test if I was to claim that I could sail.

I can, in the sense that broadly-speaking I know my way around a boat, the nautical ‘rules of the road’ and the basics of how to get a yacht to progress from A to B on the water with a certain degree of efficiency using only the available winds and tides. However, as someone who from a young age held the view that those who can play ball games, do – whilst those who cannot tend to take up rowing, sailing or rock-climbing as hobbies – I am not a ‘yottie’ by any stretch of the imagination.

Don’t get me wrong, I can enjoy being out on the water for an afternoon jolly as much as the next man but, if given a free hand, I’d just as soon stay at home and read a newspaper, watch a game on telly, mow the lawn or fly a kite. That’s quite different from being someone who positively relishes in mucking about in boats and possesses an intuitive facility to follow wind shifts, tie knots, speak the lingo and deal with every last challenge of being at sea – close to home, my own son being one such example.

Nevertheless, since the Bermudan section of this year’s America’s Cup competition began, motivated by the above-mentioned dismissive comment of my parent’s neighbour and the fact that BT Sport was offering live television coverage, I have made a habit of following its progress.

In its latest (deliberately ‘spectator-friendly’) guise it has made for fascinating viewing even for land-lubbers like me. The camera work, directing and graphics of the broadcasts are excellent, the basic scheme of the ‘head or head’ races is easy to follow and the technical terms and language of the commentators and expert pundits allow even the uninitiated to appreciate the extraordinary skills and knowledge of the elite sailors and crew piloting these elite ‘Formula One’-style monsters of the sailing world during their bite-size (18 to 20 minute) ‘dog eat dog’ contests that take place, one after the other, with no more than ten minute intervals between them.

Inevitably, however, the essence of the current America’s Cup structure, as exhibited by this ‘challenger round’, remains somewhat artificial. As with Premier League football and indeed the Formula One Grand Prix circus we are not witnessing competition upon an even playing field.

The national participants – Oracle Team USA (the holders), Emirates Team New Zealand, Land Rover BAR (UK), Artemis Racing (Sweden), Softbank Team Japan and Groupama Team France – can be split into ‘serious contenders’ and ‘also rans’.

The serious contenders are backed by billionaire-type funding – Ainslie’s four-year campaign leading to 2017 is reported to have cost £130 million thus far – and have been in a state of continuous long-term development.

Whereas, in contrast, the ‘also rans’ (Japan and France this time) are operating on shoe-string budgets and coming to the party as ‘Johnny-Come-Latelies’ in America’s Cup terms, hoping against hope that they do well enough to justify continuing to next time and a main sponsor’s open cheque book. And, to be fair, to an extent they’ve managed to be far more competitive that their inferior set-ups would have suggested they might be.

It is also a fact of life that there are certain countries with great maritime histories who produce sailors of quality, which is why (as far as I am aware) there is neither a single Swede on the Swedish team, nor a single native of Japan on that of the Japanese boat. The vast bulk of the crews on all the boats taking part come from America, New Zealand and Britain.

And then we come to the Semi-Final stage, now just coming to its conclusion.

To a degree you could tell how things were going to go before a race was sailed.

As top seed from the preliminary round, New Zealand had the first right of choice over its semi-final opponent – and they chose Land Rover BAR, thus demonstrating that ‘those in the know’ had identified the latter as inferior and putting the metaphorical writing on the wall for the British challenge. And thus it panned out. For all his efforts, Ainslie was crushed 5-2 in the nine-race series, with two races still to go.

It was evident from Day One that the Kiwi boat was inherently faster and, in elite sailing, speed through the water will trump any helmsman’s and/or crew’s expertise every time.

So now Ainslie and his team will have to return home, lick their wounds, regroup and then work out whether they and their prospective funders have the appetite to embark upon another America’s Cup cycle. It seems to me that – when one thinks of the publicity and business opportunities surrounding this competition – in the end the decision may be as much a commercial as a sailing/competitive one.

As a postscript – and an aside – Sir Ben Ainslie, perhaps Britain’s greatest ever competitive sailor is now 40.

Peter Burling, the Emirates Team New Zealand helmsman – a multi-world champion and 2016 Olympic gold medallist in the 49er yacht class along with his crewman Blair Tuke – is just 26 (and looks about eight years younger than that).