The America’s Cup: A High Seas Expression of Pure Capitalism – STRATFOR

A crew of improbable New Zealand heroes was honored on a wintry July 11 with a parade that drew throngs of jubilant Kiwis to the streets of Wellington. Members of Emirates Team New Zealand (ETNZ) had just returned from Bermuda, where they had become the underdog winners of the America's Cup sailing race. Their victory over titleholders Oracle Team USA was sweet redemption: ETNZ had blown a commanding lead over Oracle in the 2013 competition. In this year's rematch, however, the relatively underfunded Kiwis parlayed a blend of skill and technological ingenuity to take down their rivals, lavishly backed by tech billionaire Larry Ellison. ETNZ's stunning win offers a chance to delve into the world of elite sailing, an international sport in which technology and innovation rule the seas and national identity is as slippery as a deck in a storm.

On the surface, sailing seems a decidedly anachronistic sport, conjuring images of a suntanned septuagenarian in Sperry Top-Siders. After all, the sail itself is an outmoded technology, and the grand prize of sport sailing the America's Cup is celebrated as the oldest trophy in sports. In reality, modern sailing keeps pace with Formula One in its cutting-edge design and the relentless pursuit of innovation, and the America's Cup has historically been contested by the best available vessels, be they schooners in the 1851 inaugural, sloops in the 1880s, the J-class in the 1930s, or the high-tech catamarans used today.

The race's constantly evolving technology is a result of what might be the most flexible and dynamic governing apparatus in all of sports. While there are a formal America's Cup committee and rule-making organs, the major dictates of each iteration of the race are largely up to the previous winner. That's right: The race location, vessel type and a slew of other rules and regulations are determined by the defending champions, who historically have been free to stack the deck in their favor. In years past, this led to a fairly one-sided competition, with the New York Yacht Club enjoying a streak of victories from 1851 through 1980. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the club's teams enjoyed the patronage of some wealthy household names: J.P. Morgan, Ted Turner and a variety of Vanderbilts. In an effort to spread the appeal of the sport in recent times, the competition has been made slightly more egalitarian, but titleholders still hold a considerable edge; only one team has ever failed to repeat its victory at least once.

Ellison, the founder of the Oracle brand and the eponymous sailing team, has emerged as an interesting standard-bearer for the sport: He spends relentlessly in the pursuit of victory but has also endorsed rules and structures to help grow sailboat racing beyond its traditional audience. At the defending Oracle team's direction, the 2013 Cup races were held in San Francisco Bay, bringing the action closer to spectators on the shore. That series also saw the introduction of the catamaran-style vessels that have nearly quadrupled racing speeds. Ellison's team staged its impressive, come-from-behind victory that year. Its run of eight straight wins to clinch a 9-8 triumph garnered a good deal of extra media attention for the race and the sport.

Following its 2013 heartbreak, ETNZ appears to have pulled out all the stops en route to a resounding defeat of Ellison's squad in June. The Kiwis' most novel innovation was to install a set of hydraulic power-generating stationary bicycles in their boat to replace the traditional hand-cranked systems that have long been the norm. This made for curious viewing: To casual spectators, it looked as if the boats were paddle-driven by cyclists. Of course, this was not the case, but the bicycle system gave the team massive gains in efficiency while literally freeing up hands on deck. It had been developed under a shroud of secrecy and unveiled only a few months before the competition; only one other team attempted to install a similar setup. ETNZ also relied on some of the sport's most sophisticated data systems, using a blend of telemetry, GPS and drone footage to gain every possible advantage.

Naturally, the boats don't sail themselves, and the ETNZ sailors, under the leadership of skipper Glenn Ashby and helmsman Peter Burling, emerged as the competition's most capable group in terms of foiling. This occurs when the catamaran builds up enough speed that the craft's twin hydrofoils raise the main hull out of the water. The hydrofoils, in turn, reduce friction with the water enough to push the boat to speeds that can exceed those of the wind. The New Zealanders' advantage in foiling came in part because they were the first to employ the approach. New Zealand relied on a shrewd interpretation of the race's rules in 2013 to pioneer foiling, which has quickly become a standard technique across the sport. Between its clandestine innovation and rule-pushing tactics, the upstart squad bested the field in the qualification rounds this year and cruised to a 7-1 victory over Oracle in the final race series.

The relatively open competitive structures also lead to interesting moments of collaboration, rivalry and subterfuge that are matched only by professional wrestling. After the Italian Luna Rossa syndicate, challengers to ETNZ for the next cup, withdrew from this year's race in protest of the reduction and standardization of vessel size, it turned over some of its resources to ETNZ in the process. After the ETNZ boat capsized during the qualifying tournament, the team reached out to Groupama Team France, which had already been eliminated, for support and equipment. The French initially refused (allegedly at the urging of Oracle), then promised help in exchange for a payment of 300,000 euros before withdrawing the offer.

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The America's Cup: A High Seas Expression of Pure Capitalism - STRATFOR