Alinghi team members hold back the tears as they reflect on the end of an era of Alinghi dominance in the America's Cup....
"Bugger!" - Alinghi reflects on the End of an Era
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It was only last February, just a few days after BMW Oracle Racing won the America’s Cup when the mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, handed the keys to the city to one of its most famous inhabitants, Larry Ellison. Ellison returned the favour by giving Newsom a team jacket. All seemed sweetness and light between the new holders of the America’s Cup and the city of San Francisco...
Suddenly multihulls are flavour of the month. With the next America’s Cup set to take place in 72-foot catamarans, the International Sailing Federation has now reinstated multihulls into the Olympic line-up for the Rio 2016 Games. And the boat that is now rejected from the Olympic Games? ...
The new vision for the America’s Cup laid out by Russell Coutts is certainly different. For some, it has proven too different. First casualty after the announcement of wing-masted 72-foot catamarans racing in 2013 (venue yet to be determined) was Team Origin. After spending millions simply navigating his team through the past three directionless years of America’s Cup limbo, Sir Keith Mills has pulled the plug on the campaign just as the fog starts to clear...
Russell Coutts has upset the applecart with his radical announcement that 72-foot catamarans will be the weapon of choice for the 34th America’s Cup. Not only that, but he’s talking about wing-masted catamarans. Sound familiar? It was a wing mast that powered BMW Oracle Racing’s trimaran to victory last February in Valencia...
BMW Oracle has been carrying out some extensive TV trials of monohulls and multihulls in Valencia. The aim, says the Defender, is to work out which kind of boat is going to offer the biggest bang for buck in Russell Coutts’s vision of a more media-friendly and commercially-attractive America’s Cup...
All eyes were on Team Origin at the start of the Louis Vuitton Trophy in La Maddalena, the sparse but ruggedly beautiful island off the northern coast of Sardinia. Just days earlier, team director Mike ‘Moose’ Sanderson was fired by Sir Keith Mills. It was a terse press release that announced the New Zealander’s departure, and none sounded more surprised than Sanderson himself...
In Britain we’ve spent the last few weeks getting used to the idea of two rival political leaders putting aside their tribal enmities to form a coalition government. In the world of the America’s Cup, Sir Russell Coutts and Vincenzo Onorato are the David Cameron/Nick Clegg combo looking to straighten out a sporting event which they view as being in need of salvation after seven years of abuse by Alinghi...
Louis Vuitton has been an integral part of the America’s Cup since the luxury goods company first gave its name to the Louis Vuitton Challenger Series back in Newport 1983. That close association continued up to Valencia 2007, but following Alinghi’s successful defence of the Cup, Louis Vuitton withdrew its backing...
Since winning the America’s Cup in mid-February, Russell Coutts has barely had time to draw breath. The CEO of BMW Oracle Racing flew with Larry Ellison and the rest of the team for some Auld Mug-wielding celebrations in San Francisco, home of the Golden Gate Yacht Club which they represented, and San Diego, where the team had carried out many months of development and testing of their winged-trimaran...
Alinghi helmsman Ed Baird talks through the process of tacking and gybing Alinghi 5, and how it might compare with the way that their America's Cup rivals on BMW Oracle Racing might approach the same manoeuvres...
Video/ Audio: Matt Sheahan of Yachting World joins Justin and Andy at the Alinghi Base to discuss another day of frustration at the 33rd America's Cup in Valencia, and speculate on why extraordinary boats can't race in ordinary conditions. The noise in the background, by the way, is the engine firing up on Alinghi 5....
So now we’ve seen the power of wing rigs in action in the America’s Cup, what possibility of a trickledown of technology into other forms of sailing? What about superyachts? BMW Oracle’s design team director Mike Drummond observed, tongue in cheek: “If you go to Wings R Us.com, you can get any size you like.” Of course, this technology is anything but off the shelf, but nor is it new, as Drummond also pointed out: “Wings are not new, they’ve been used by birds for quite a long time... |
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