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Yes, this was written just before the venue announcement, but it is about much more than that. ed.
OK, fair point. Having lambasted current America’s Cup rules and regulations as unhinged from the realities of the sport I should at least have the courage to propose some sensible alternatives. Challenge accepted.
First, let’s get a threshold pedantry out of the way. The “America’s Cup” is not named in honour of the Land of The Free. It is, in truth, a presumptuous invention. The cup itself – the “auld mug” – was originally the Royal Yacht Squadron £100 Cup.
But six years after the schooner America won that first challenge race around the Isle of White, the US syndicate, lead by George Lee Schuyler, donated the cup to the New York Yacht Club under a Deed of Gift, blithely re-naming it the “America’s Cup”.
That rather arrogant act of appropriation was not appreciated by the British. Forty years later their yachting magazines still insisted on naming the event the “America Cup”, with no possessive apostrophe “s” and the yacht’s name in italics. But I digress.
What is clear from the letter and spirit of the original 1857 Deed of Gift (and its subsequent amendments and additions) is that the Cup competition was meant to be a fair and balanced sporting contest that combined sailing skill with yacht design.
Easy to say, difficult to achieve. What the mid-19th Century lawyers who drafted the Deed failed to foresee was that technology would eventually come to dominate the event and relegate the sailors to a minor supporting role.
To my mind, that is the imbalance a revised America’s Cup must correct if it is to retain any relevance to the broader yachting community…
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