Sir Ben Ainslie on new £110m bid to win the America’s Cup
Britain is equipped to capture trophy for first time since 1851 thanks to huge investment
We could not have chosen a much more historic venue to announce a truly historic partnership for the team yesterday. The Prospect of Whitby in Wapping is London’s oldest riverside pub.
Dating back to 1520, it still features a hangman’s noose over the river from which pirates were reputedly hung.
Hopefully, we will avoid that fate if we can bring the America’s Cup back to Britain after 170 years.
The announcement that INEOS, one of the world’s largest manufacturing companies, is to pump £110million into our challenge for the 2021 America’s Cup, launching what is effectively a new team called INEOS Team GB, is a potential game-changer in terms of our bid to win back sport’s oldest international trophy.
It has been a whirlwind few weeks. The decision to go this route was not taken lightly. It is a massive shift from the previous model we had, which had been to build a commercially sustainable structure through a mixture of investors and commercial partners.
It had, however, become increasingly clear – with the announcement of the new class rule by Emirates Team New Zealand and the rule changes which have been put in place – that we would need to build two 75-foot foiling monohulls from scratch.
That requirement to run a two-boat campaign took the budget up by approximately 30 per cent, to about £110million.
We tried incredibly hard to make it work with our existing investors and commercial partners; looking to see whether we could increase our budget under that structure. But it became clear that we were not going to hit the required target.
It was at around this time, a month or so ago, that I was introduced to Jim Ratcliffe, the chairman of INEOS. We hit it off and Jim immediately understood the project and what was required if we were to be competitive. Amazingly, Jim agreed to underwrite the entire campaign.
Jim’s quid pro quo – quite reasonably – was that if he was going to inject this much into the project, it needed to be a completely blank slate.
I will not lie, there were some detailed conversations with our existing investors and commercial partners. They were disappointed.
But, ultimately, this was the team’s decision, and they could see that this was a massive opportunity to give Britain the best chance to win the 36th staging of the race.
I cannot thank them enough for the way they reacted. That goes for Sir Keith Mills, Chris Bake and Sir Charles Dunstone – whose investment and expertise got BAR off the ground in the first place – as much as anyone. They remain firm friends and supportive of the project, as do all of our original investors.
Basically, the new structure sees the racing arm of BAR renamed and entering into a service agreement with INEOS whereby we provide the British company with the boats, the team, the wherewithal, to compete for the 36th America’s Cup under the Royal Yacht Squadron Racing’s banner. In terms of the race team itself, things remain pretty much the same, with Grant Simmer as CEO, Nick Holroyd as chief designer and Jo Grindley as chief commercial officer. The core department leads, guys such as Jono Macbeth and James Stagg will also keep pushing as hard as ever.
We will look to continue to work with a few of our technical partners, too. As always in the Cup, we will need to tap into the best engineering expertise. Some of which may come from INEOS.
These are incredibly exciting times for the team in Portsmouth. It has been a full-on period and a massive learning curve for me, but I think we are in good shape.
Clearly, the Kiwis and Italians have had the class rule for longer. And the Kiwis, in particular, are in a good place with their simulation.
But I think that is a strength of ours as well. Compared with where we were at this stage in the last cycle, it is light years apart.
We are in the process of signing up more sailors as we speak, and we will be launching our first test boat – half scale – in the summer.
Yesterday’s announcement sends a statement of intent and one which gives us the best chance to bring the America’s Cup back to Britain – where it belongs.