Update
Each day the Cup Defenders waste trying to organise themselves out of a hole of their own making is another day when Russell Coutts’s SailGP steals a bit more of the limelight. We still question how such an expensive circuit can ever be truly self-sustaining, but no matter, today it is there, it is spectacular, it sees the world’s best current sailors facing off and it produces images like this. We do not believe anything will ever ‘replace’ the America’s Cup, but the more competition it faces the longer the delay before it ever regains that pinnacle status. The Cup has faded into obscurity before – and then it did not face any direct competition for attention. Sort yourselves out before you start looking to the P-Class for your next America’s Cup squad… this lot will have gone grey at best
FOLLOW THE (SERIOUS) MONEY – PART 3: TYCOONS AND IMPRESARIOS – Jack Griffin Tycoons have played leading roles in the America’s Cup since that race around the Isle of Wight in 1851. Impresarios have also played leading roles. Both early and recent history shows that there are two kinds of America’s Cup impresarios – those who have money, and those who need to find money. The first America’s Cup impresario was Alexander Cuthbert, a
Scottish-born chancer who designed and built the challengers for the third and fourth matches, Countess of Dufferin in 1876 and Atalanta in 1881, both sneeringly referred to as freshwater yachts by some New York Yacht Club members. Cuthbert was always ready to take a gamble, usually long on
enthusiasm and short on money. Atalanta became known as the Canadian Mud Turtle, since her voyage to New York went through the Erie Canal, and she needed to be heeled far over with her masts removed to pass through the canal’s locks. Unamused, once Mischiefeasily and unsurprisingly won the Match, the NYYC returned the Cup to George Schuyler so he could amend the Deed of Gift, adding the provisions that challengers needed to proceed to the match venue on their own bottoms, under sail, and that challenging yacht clubs needed an ocean water course for their annual regatta. The best America’s Cup impresario was certainly Sir Thomas
Lipton. Unlike Cuthbert, Lipton had plenty of money for his five Shamrock challenges. He also had a thriving consumer business of grocery stores and tea, and understood the value of brand build- ing. As a young entrepreneur he used stunts to promote his first grocery store, parading pigs and giant cheeses through Glasgow. During his America’s Cup challenges his lavish steam superyacht
Erin provided the perfect platform for VIP hospitality. Described in the US press as the world’s most eligible bachelor, the never-married Lipton became so beloved by Americans that they donated enough
14 SEAHORSE
money to present him with a solid gold loving cup in 1930 after his fifth unsuccessful challenge. In 1970 we had the first multi-challenger America’s Cup. Baron
Marcel Bich persuaded the New York Yacht Club to allow a challenger selection series, similar to the defender trials. The tradition of multiple, underfunded and poorly organised challengers began immediately. The Yacht Club of Greece and Britain’s Royal Dorset Yacht Club both submitted challenges but neither made it to Newport in the summer of 1970. Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron was the first Challenger of Record, and the only CoR to win the challenger selection series until Circolo della Vela Sicilia’s Luna Rossa repeated the feat in Auckland this year. Like other Frenchmen, Baron Bich admired Eric Tabarly’s victory
with Pen Duick in the 1964 transatlantic race. When Bich informed the New York Yacht Club that he intended to race with the name Pen Bic the New Yorkers informed him that the America’s Cup was not a commercial event. Little did they know! Like Lipton, Bich had the means to mount a serious sailing team,
so instead he named his yachts France. Like Lipton, he also had the means to do some serious entertaining. The late Bob Fisher wrote that Bich’s challenge lacked for nothing except discipline. Fisher quoted Bruno Troublé: ‘In the first attempt, in 1970, Bich
was really impressive. It was something that hadn’t been seen in the America’s Cup since the 1930s. Bich came with 80 people, two boats, three skippers, four including himself. It was a huge effort for that time. He was living in one of the mansions on Bellevue Avenue. At one of the parties there was a fountain filled with cham- pagne instead of water. People were filling their glasses under the fountain. For some crewmembers it was the best time of their life – girls everywhere, parties, the racing part was just secondary. It was not very serious. But it was tremendous.’ Alan Bond is probably the most intriguing America’s Cup impre- sario. His Southern Cross represented Royal Perth Yacht Club, but
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