No America in This Cup

Those who find baseball too swift and pitching horseshoes too dramatic have trouble staying awake for yacht racing. Colorful, yes, with those sails billowing in the wind. Exciting? Usually not. But this year’s matches to determine which challenger will meet New Zealand, the defending America’s Cup champion, were different. They were close, down-to-the-wire contests. Alas, in the end, they also decided that for the first time ever there will be no American boat in the America’s Cup.

Two competing syndicates spent a staggering $80 million or more to get San Francisco-based AmericaOne and the Italian yacht Prada Challenge to the semifinals. After a seesaw competition, the Italians took the deciding ninth race Sunday by 49 seconds. Many of the races, which began in October with 11 teams from seven nations, ended with boats only seconds apart after two hours of racing.

Money didn’t smooth out all the bumps in the competition, in recent times usually held every three or four years. Some races were postponed because of too little wind or too much. The hull of one multimillion-dollar boat buckled in a November race, forcing the sailors to jump overboard.

At its highest levels, yacht racing has been transformed from a bastion of the old-money set to one of international commercial sponsorship: Prada, Ford, Hewlett-Packard. But the installation of microphones and cameras on the yachts also lets television viewers witness the high level of skill and enormous amount of muscle required.

The United States held the cup from 1851 until 1983, when an Australian boat won. Americans got it back, but New Zealand claimed the cup in the San Diego races four years ago.

In the inaugural race, the yacht America raced against 16 English boats around the Isle of Wight. Aides assured Queen Victoria there was no way the Americans could win. But a chastened equerry was forced to admit that the first yacht in sight, the eventual winner, was America. “Who’s in second?” asked the queen. “Madam, there is no second,” came the reply.