How the America’s Cup Got Painted Into a Corner

Roger Vaughan, internationally published journalist and writer, has written two books about the America’s Cup and has contributed to several others. Here he comments on the current state of the contest…

The America’s Cup has always been about money, jurisprudence and ego. It also always prides itself with being on the cutting edge of what current technology can provide. Hence, foiling multihulls. That aspect is what has painted the Cup into an unfortunate corner.

Speed can be exhilarating, but as NASCAR has proved, it can also be boring. The emphasis on speed has taken a lot of the compelling stuff about match racing out of the picture. Tactics, luffing matches (downspeed tacking), the Zen of starting, light sail handling – these are all secondary to pure speed. The Cup is now a drag race from start to finish.

Having a pure speed contest in one-design multihulls is no longer the America’s Cup. The old Deed of Gift is in tatters. I’d like to see the Deed revised to be more in line with its former self, and see a NFL/NBA/NHL-type central authority established to run the America’s Cup in monohulls every four years–exciting monohulls designed after TP52s or RC44s–crewed by nationals from the various countries.

Then we would have something going.