The Swiss yacht Alinghi has returned to successfully defend the America’s Cup in Valenica, Spain, defeating Emirates Team New Zealand 5-2 in the best of nine race series. Exactly how a team from a landlocked, mountainous country wins open ocean yacht races is intriguing (actually, they do it with Kiwi skippers), but nevertheless, the Cup is going back to the Societe Nautique de Geneve.

Yacht racing is one of those weird sports that is enthralling to be involved in, but heinously boring to watch. Being on board a racing yacht is a pure adrenaline rush. The action if frenetic, there is yelling and screaming and people are climbing all over the place. There is rarely a moment's rest and even on a spinnaker run there are constant adjustments. Anyone who doubts the excitement of the sport should be onboard a yacht that snaps its mast doing 17 knots in a shipping channel – it’s lots of fun!

Meanwhile, on shore, all that can be seen are boats slowly moving around, seemingly proceeding with all of the pace and ferocity of Dutch Elm disease. It’s like watching snail racing on a grand scale or the actions of the aquatic lovechild of chess and ballet. Suffice to say, it is not a sport that can be appreciated from a distance.

"Anyone who doubts the excitement of the sport should be onboard a yacht that snaps its mast doing 17 knots in a shipping channel – it’s lots of fun!'


Occasionally, however, it transcends this stereotype and can set your pulse racing and get you on the edge of your seat. 18 foot skiff racing, as an example, has managed to achieve this through well matched and standardised yachts to give close racing and creative television coverage to draw the spectators in close and give an insight into the on-board action.

But there is one class of yacht racing that rises above all others. It has an almost mythical reputation that admittedly took a bit of a battering during the late eighties, but is still strangely appealing to even those who have no interest in yachting. The America’s Cup, named after the schooner America, is the yacht racing version of the Grand National.

The America’s Cup was home to what was reputed to be the longest winning streak in sporting history, lasting 132 years. It was threatened that the head of the skipper that lost the America’s cup would replace the trophy in the glass case at the New York Yacht Club. Fortunately for Dennis Conner, this turned out to be an empty threat, as he was the one to see the auld mug finally unbolted and sent Down Under.

Since that fateful day in 1983, the challenge has been much more open with boats from New Zealand and Switzerland joining the winners list and enlisting challengers from across the globe. Once the spell had been broken, the Cup was opened up to all sorts of shenanigans, culminating in an underhanded challenge by the Kiwis in 1988.

The New Zealanders gave notice of the challenge and secretly went about designing a massive sloop cleverly, or so they thought, exploiting a loophole in the rules to gain an advantage. Say what you like about Americans, but by and large they are not that dumb. They used the same loophole to produce Stars and Stripes, a brilliant catamaran that gave the New Zealanders the spanking they so richly deserved.

Since then, however, sanity has prevailed and a standardised boat design has been settled upon. Not that this is a sport for the common man (or woman). It requires the sort of money usually associated with buying English Premier League clubs or small countries. But in the right hands and with a tiny amount of background, it can be every bit as entertaining as any other racing sport.

Those who doubt that yacht racing can be exciting need only see the finishing stage of the last race to be converted. The eventual winning margin was one second after over two hours of racing and the sight of the yachts crawling towards the line was excruciating, with Alinghi staging its third consecutive come-from-behind victory. There was ripped sails, protests, penalty turns and terrific tactical sailing – yacht racing at its very best.

America’s Cup racing gives you the best of both worlds – tight, hard fought races that still give you time to get up and grab a beer without missing too much action. Frankly, sport really doesn’t get much better than that.