Australia’s Back In The America’s Cup. Now We Just Need A Miracle

It’s been 26 years. For a country that once stopped its watches and its televisions and its beers to watch a winged keel humiliate the New York Yacht Club in 1983, that’s a long time in the wilderness.

But on Thursday at the Royal Prince Edward Yacht Club on Sydney Harbour, the wilderness ended. Team Australia is in. Backed by John Winning Jr and family, with Grant Simmer as CEO, Glenn Ashby running performance and design, and Tom Slingsby as Head of Sailing. Tash Bryant on the sailing roster. Slingsby joined via video link. Ashby was at the announcement five days after breaking his leg in Bermuda.

Full disclosure: We’ve been a guest of Omega at the last two America’s Cups, Bermuda in 2017 and Barcelona in 2024. So this is a sport close to my heart, even if it’s a niche one. And nothing, hand on heart, would be finer than watching an Australian team not just turn up, but turn it on.

The problem is that the hill in front of them is enormous.

Remember When Winning The Cup Used To Matter?

John Bertrand. Bondy. Ben Lexcen’s winged keel. Down 3-1, won 4-3, ended 132 years of New York Yacht Club ownership, the single longest winning streak in the history of sport. Bob Hawke on the telly in a jacket telling the country any boss who sacked a worker for not turning up was a bum.

And then we lost it. By 1987 the defence had moved to Fremantle and Bondy’s syndicate didn’t even make it through our own defender trials. Kookaburra III got the gig instead, helmed by Iain Murray, and Dennis Conner’s Stars & Stripes swept them 4-0. The Cup was on the next plane to San Diego and we haven’t held it since.

In 1983 this was the biggest thing in Australian sport. Bigger than the cricket. Bigger than the footy. Try to imagine that happening now. You can’t. The world’s moved on. Formula 1, MotoGP, SailGP itself (which Slingsby happens to be running away with on the Flying Roos), the Premier League streaming at three in the morning, a phone in every pocket pinging at all hours.

The America’s Cup is still the oldest trophy in international sport. It just doesn’t carry the gravitas it carried in 1983, and pretending otherwise is not cricket. It’s also, very much, a rich man’s sport. In a world where the wealth gap is what it is, watching billionaires foil around the Bay of Naples on $20 million yachts is going to land differently than Bondy in a stained polo waving the Auld Mug over his head.

The Kiwis Are Operating On Another Planet

If you’ve ever been to Emirates Team New Zealand’s base in Auckland, you’ll know what we’re up against. It’s not a yacht club operation. It’s a Formula 1 outfit that happens to race on water. In-house design, in-house build, in-house everything. Three America’s Cups in a row. Ben Ainslie has called them, on the record, the greatest America’s Cup team of all time.

And the most galling part? They don’t even spend the most.

In Barcelona, Britannia turned up with Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s chequebook (the man owns part of Manchester United and the entirety of INEOS), the engineering brains of the Mercedes F1 team, and Sir Ben Ainslie at the helm. They became the first British team in 60 years to make the final. They won the Louis Vuitton Cup. And then the Kiwis dispatched them 7-2.

I was there. The Brits looked, on paper and in the boat park, like the most serious challenger in a generation. And they got rolled.

So if Ratcliffe’s billions and Mercedes’ wind tunnels couldn’t crack New Zealand, what does an Australian campaign turning up 14 months out actually look like?

On Paper, We’ve Got The People

Glenn Ashby is the man who helped Emirates Team New Zealand win three Cups in a row. He’s the architect of the operation we now have to beat. He’s also Australian, and he’s now ours. That alone is a coup.

Tom Slingsby is, at this exact moment, the best skipper in the SailGP series. London 2012 gold. America’s Cup winner with Oracle in 2013. Helmed American Magic for three campaigns. The quote he put out on Thursday told you everything: he’s wanted to bring Australia back to the Cup for his whole career, and he’s now here doing it with Herman Winning, a mate of 30 years.

Grant Simmer has more America’s Cups on his CV than most yacht clubs.

And then there’s Jimmy Spithill. Youngest skipper to ever win the Cup. The man who pulled off the greatest comeback in sailing history, 8-1 down to 9-8 up for Oracle in 2013. Currently CEO of the Red Bull Italy SailGP team. But here’s the curious symmetry: the last time Australia officially entered the America’s Cup was the 2000 Young Australia campaign, and the skipper was a 20-year-old Jimmy Spithill.

Whether he comes back in some capacity to help develop the boat, we don’t know. But if there’s any Australian alive who knows how to find the last 2% in a foiling AC75, it’s him. A phone call wouldn’t hurt.

The Real Problem Is The Runway. And The Cheque.

The match starts on July 10, 2027. Team Australia have, give or take, 14 months. They’ve reportedly bought the AC75 Emirates Team New Zealand used to win in 2021, which they’ll now have to modify to the current AC75 rule. There’s a €75 million cost cap per team this cycle, which sounds like a fence until you remember the Kiwis have spent three Cups perfecting their in-house everything, and the Italians have been racing AC75s since 2019.

The first preliminary regatta is in Cagliari from May 21 to 24. That’s next week. Team Australia will not be there in any meaningful way. The runway, to put it politely, is fucking short.

Which brings us to the money. John Winning Jr is a serious businessman, an 18ft Skiff Sydney to Hobart winner, and a genuine sailor. He’s also not a billionaire on the Ratcliffe scale. Australia has the wealth to mount a proper challenge. We just don’t currently have it pointing at Naples.

This is where the call needs to go out. Twiggy Forrest. Gina Rinehart. The Lowys. Any family office for whom a few tens of millions wouldn’t move the spreadsheet but would, conceivably, get them invited to the most exclusive marquee in European sport for a fortnight in July 2027. The Cup, properly funded, is a vanity project of the highest order. And the line outside the Bagnoli team base in Naples is, hand on heart, the most rarefied air in lifestyle sport.

For John Winning Jr himself, adding “America’s Cup winner” to his sailing CV would be, in the most technical possible sense, pretty impressive.

So, Where Does That Leave Us?

Australia is back in the America’s Cup for the first time since 2000. We’ve got Ashby. We’ve got Slingsby. We’ve got Simmer. We’ve got a boat, sort of. We’ve got 14 months. We do not yet have the cheque.

Naples 2027 isn’t a fairytale. It’s a fistfight in a wind tunnel against the most dominant operation in modern sailing, with a runway most professional teams would consider laughable. But Australia turning up at all is the story. Whether we win is the next one.

And I’ll be honest, sitting in the Omega box in Barcelona in 2024 watching Britannia get clinically dismantled by the Kiwis, the thought I kept coming back to was: imagine an Australian boat down there.

Stranger things have happened in this sport. 1983 was one of them. Let’s go!