Sky Sports will show the America's Cup World Series, Christmas Regatta and PRADA Cup Challenger Selection Series, before culminating with the 2021 America's Cup Match
Friday 22 January 2021 07:33, UK
From seven tonnes of boat flying on water to the reigning champions setting the rules, we take a look at what makes the America's Cup such a unique and fascinating sporting event.
The America's Cup was first contested in 1851, it is the oldest trophy in international sport and pre-dates the modern Olympic Games by 45 years.
In 2021, the 36th America's Cup Match will be broadcast live on Sky Sports, alongside the America's Cup World Series, Christmas Regatta and PRADA Cup Challenger Selection Series.
This is a competition like no other and one that is using modern technology and elite personnel to take sailing to a place that it has never been to before.
Here we take a look at what makes the America's Cup such a captivating and thrilling competition...
The 36th America's Cup match will take place in March 2021 when one challenger will take on the team described as "the All Blacks of the sailing world" by Sir Ben Ainslie.
In the match, Team Emirates New Zealand will be challenged on their home waters and tested against their own rules, (more about them later).
Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli Team, American Magic, INEOS TEAM UK and Stars and Stripes Team USA have all put thousands of man hours, and euros/dollars/pounds, into their respective America's Cup campaigns. Yet, three of them will not make it to the start line of the 2021 America's Cup match.
There can only be one winner of The Prada Cup - Challenger Selection Series and that contest must be won in order to face-off against Emirates Team New Zealand in the final match.
The Prada Cup is not just a one-day race either! It features four round-robins, semi-finals and then a final. It is an arduous contest and one that will ruthlessly end some teams' dreams before they have even started.
The protocol of the America's Cup is that the defending champion develops the parameters for the next race. This means that no two America's Cup campaigns are ever the same.
In 2017 Team Emirates New Zealand triumphed over Oracle Team USA by seven to one, and as a result immediately started work on creating the framework for this event.
Instead of staying with the AC50 catamarans raced in 2017, they have decided to move the sport on and shift to a different class and type of boat.
"As defender, there's an element of risk in whatever path you go down," Dan Bernasconi, design coordinator for Emirates Team New Zealand said.
"We had a lot of experience and knowledge about how to make an AC50 optimal but also everyone else had seen what we'd done. It would have been very easy for them to copy [that].
"We're really proud of the innovation that we've put in and we believe in our team's ability to innovate. By opening the playing field, we're playing to our strengths."
The route that Emirates Team New Zealand have decided to go down is to compete with AC75s; 75ft foiling monohulls.
These boats have the ability to fly as seven tonnes of boat launches up a few metres above the water and accelerates out to speeds of around 60 miles per hour.
You are doing 50 knots across the water, supported by something the size of an ironing board which is keeping you foiling. When you put it like that, it's absolute nonsense really, isn't it? But, its good fun...
"For those who don't sail, when you start accelerating, you're obviously in the water, and you've got lots of water and spray going everywhere," Ainslie, team principal and skipper of INEOS TEAM UK told Sky Sports.
"Then you reach take-off speed; you trim the boat and the foils properly and the boat lifts up out of the water. They are a huge amount of fun to sail [and] incredibly challenging to try and balance a boat on one foil and a rudder.
"When we get up there, we're up around 50 knots (60mph) of boat speed, which for a power boat is really going some and for a sailing boat is a phenomenal speed."
The 36th America's Cup has pushed the envelope to a place where that even the most experienced and respected sailors could not have predicted.
"If someone had told me that we'd be doing what we're doing now, as an eight-year-old learning to sail, I would have just laughed and thought that it was absolute lunacy," Ainslie said with a smile.
Not only is this campaign pushing the sailors, it is pushing the design and technology teams who are working tirelessly alongside them.
A feature of this Cup's rules is that no team is permitted test components in controlled environments, such as wind or water tunnel testing.
This has meant that teams have had to turn to other avenues for testing and Computational Fluid Dynamics using AWS is a key part of daily life at INEOS TEAM UK's headquarters.
Emirates Team New Zealand have announced they have used Spark New Zealand and a 5G service, which has been set up specifically for them, to gain live data off their boat using.
Those two uses of technology are examples on top of everything that is involved to make the AC75s function, fly and perform manoeuvres which do not look possible for such boats of their scale.
Teams of experts will have been making critical choices for months and soon, when all of the second race boats arrive in New Zealand, they will be able to see the final roads that their counterparts decided to go down.
Watch every moment of the America's Cup challenge, live on Sky Sports. Coverage starts with the America's Cup World Series on December 17.
