New Zealand Bests Britain for Its Third Consecutive America’s Cup Win

On Saturday, Team Emirates New Zealand won the America’s Cup for the third time in a row, beating the INEOS Britannia challengers 7-2 in the final race series. Two days earlier, the British dream of a “Miracle on the Med,” which would’ve brought the Cup back to England for the first time since 1851, seemed like a real underdog possibility, given the U.K. team won two successive races to bring the series to 4-2.

But it was not to be. The Kiwis won two more races on Friday and clinched a tight race for an historic three-peat on Saturday, arriving across the finish line 37 seconds ahead of INEOS. The black-clad team aboard New Zealand’s foiling raceboat sprayed each other with Moet and later doused the America’s Cup itself in bubbly while thousands of Kiwi fans, who had traveled around the world to watch the finals, cheered in celebration.

Thus ended the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup, a 10-month event that was unlike any other in the America’s Cup 183-year history. The world’s oldest sailing regatta that began with a friendly “100-guinea” race off England’s Isle of Wight is now waged between billionaire owners whose professional sailing teams race the most sophisticated racing yachts ever created.

This time, the Formula 1 of sailing made Barcelona its epicenter, and with it came an international sporting circus worthy of the world’s attention. Red Bull sponsored the Swiss Alinghi team, one of six Challengers for the Cup, which added a sense of unconventional fun at the start of the event, thanks to Red Bull’s BMXers, breakdancers, slackliners, and cliff divers backflipping from the deck of a 75-foot sailboat suspended by a crane. Other sponsors included Louis Vuitton (which was just inducted into the America’s Cup Hall of Fame) and Omega, along with Puig, Emirates, Coca-Cola, Cupra, Capgemini, and a dozen other local sponsors.

Even in this sprawling city of six million, the presence of the America’s Cup was unavoidable, especially along the bustling waterfront between the superyacht marinas of Port Olimpic and Port Vell, the beachy Barceloneta and the World Trade Center, which housed the event’s operations center and broadcast suite that beamed the races around the world with state-of-the-art graphics and beginner explanations of the complicated racing rules. The organizers planned to reach one billion viewers worldwide.

And they went all out to make this event the opposite of a stuffy sailboat racing series, as the America’s Cup has often been viewed in the past. Up to 12 cameras were on each raceboat to convey the thrills and boat speeds, while drones, helicopters, and chase boats filmed the races. Pop-up race villages with jumbotrons and bars were strategically spaced along the coastline for visitors.

The harbor’s Race Village had a main stage, sponsor pavilions, bars, and an IMAX studio experience that brought Cup novices up to speed on how the seven-ton foiling boats literally fly over the water at speeds above 63 mph. The waterfront was set up for crowds, and they came—an estimated two million visitors from August through October, injecting about one billion Euros into the local economy.

The America’s Cup was also responsible for about 20,000 jobs during its 10-month run, which included not just the Cup finals, but also the Louis Vuitton Cup, the Unicredit Youth America’s Cup, Puig Women’s America’s Cup, and the America’s Cup e-series.

The regatta certainly captured the city’s attention. On the eve of the America’s Cup finals, organizers and the city of Barcelona created an Olympic-esque opening ceremony, with renown Catalonian performers, illuminated sailboats circling in the sea, castellers building towers with their bodies and a captivating show with more than 1,000 drones shape-shifting in the air together. About 60,000 people attended the event, packed shoulder to shoulder to watch the festivities.

There had been a protest of several thousand people complaining about the flaunting of wealth that the America’s Cup represents. But one local journalist, asking not to be named, said: “This event is exactly what the city needs to grow and attract a different type of tourist than the bachelor parties and drunks on the streets. This event brings a better type of visitor and, being international, is good for Barcelona’s reputation.”

More than 6,000 fans came from New Zealand to support the home team. Native Maoris flown in from the Motherland also raised the roof with a Haka and war cries that carried across the harbor, goading their sailors to victory. It was very much a non-traditional Cup.

Even the finals were unusually dramatic. The Kiwi Defenders, which faced the winner of a grueling challenger series, took on INEOS Britannia. Its skipper was Ben Ainslie, 47, the greatest modern-day British sailor who seems to have a talent for comebacks. He holds gold medals, a knighthood, and the respect of the world’s professional sailing community.

The British team’s owner, James Ratcliff, had also pulled out all the stops, financial and otherwise, to take back the Cup, with a budget north of $150 million. The designers and data crunchers of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 operation also had a hand in perfecting INEOS’s 75-foot foiling vessel, as much a flying object as a boat.

To reach the Cup Match itself, INEOS Britannia toiled through two months of elimination races to win the Louis Vuitton Cup, which is designed to put forth a race-hardened and worthy challenger to Team New Zealand—who spent months on the sidelines watching and analyzing their competitors to hone the final touches of the flying vessel they call Taihoro.

Despite their best efforts, Ainslie and Ratcliff have failed to win the cup twice in nearly 10 years of pursuing sailing’s holy grail. Snagging the top prize is difficult to almost impossible, which has always been its appeal and why only four nations have defended the Cup over 132 years: the U.S., Australia, Switzerland, and of course, New Zealand.

The Cup’s foiling monohulls all proved to be technical marvels, with complex foils and sails and a secretive web of mechatronics developed by each team that are triggered by button pushes from the sailors. Precision hydraulics make micro adjustments to keep the boating flying, turning and seemingly defying physics. “Death is in the water,” the sailors like to say, because if a team errs ever so slightly and the boat comes off the foils and touches down, the other vessel sails away at 10 times their stall speed.

The ultimate goal is, of course, to win the America’s Cup. Beyond claiming the racing, many believe the cup itself is a thing of rare, Victorian beauty. It travels in a custom-designed trunk from the event’s main sponsor, Louis Vuitton, which has injected a sense of high style into the series through 40 years of sponsorship. Sports sponsorships come and go, “but the cup is better with Louis Vuitton,” says Bernard Arnault, Chairman and CEO, LVMH, “and Louis Vuitton is better with the cup.”

The relationship between the storied regatta and its title sponsor is indeed sacred, the depth of which becomes evident at a gathering of dignitaries, fashionistas, journalists, and collectors at the three-story Louis Vuitton Paseo de Gràcia boutique for a private unveiling of America’s Cup: The Ultimate Edition, a “sumo-sized” limited-edition book published by Taschen. This is one of the black-tie events where the elitist side of the Cup emerges, effectively leaving the spectator masses on the docks.

The tome, jacketed in red-white-and-blue stitched leather and embossed with a Louis Vuitton clasp, is a feast of essays and images that delves into the soul of the America’s Cup. Its editor, distinguished sports journalist Pino Allievi, spent five years coordinating the project. The book costs 1,000 Euros. But true aficionados will choose the America’s Cup, Marc Newson Art Edition, which includes a carbon fiber bookstand. That run is limited to 250 and costs $25,000. Available in early 2025, it will chronicle the final chapter of the 37th America’s Cup last week, the one where the Kiwis nix the British dream of a Miracle on the Med.

When and where the next America’s Cup will be held will be known in due course, but it’s clear that INEOS Britannia, which became the official Challenger of Record, will have a say in the outcome. Sirs Ainslie and Ratcliff are already well advanced in scheming another challenge, madly driven to defy fate and get their hands on what they, at least until now, seemingly cannot have.

Whatever the future details, this 37th America’s Cup has changed the event forever, making it more accessible to tourists and fans alike in a popular Mediterranean city, with a global digital imprint that promises to grow for the next event which, if some pundits are right, could be just two years away.