Emirates Team New Zealand wins 37th America’s Cup 2024 by beating INEOS Britannia 7-2
— New Zealand’s reign as the master of high-speed yachting remains intact. Britain’s long, long wait goes on.
Emirates Team New Zealand clinched match point in the 37th America’s Cup on Saturday, beating INEOS Britannia 7-2 in the best-of-13 finals held off Barcelona’s beachfront.
The team led by Grant Dalton won its third consecutive cup in a row for the New Zealand team, who successfully defended the "Auld Mug", which they had won in Auckland in 2021 and in Bermuda in 2017.
New Zealand’s eight-man crew embraced and cheered on the deck of the 75-foot Taihoro after holding Britannia off to win Race 9.
“It is just sinking in. What an amazing day, this team has been amazing, what an amazing feeling,” New Zealand skipper Peter Burling said after his America’s Cup finals-record 22nd race win.
Britannia, meanwhile, fell one step short of winning the Auld Mug for Britain for the first time in the competition’s 173-year history.
Queen Victoria was in attendance when the schooner America bested the Royal Yacht Squadron in the race’s first edition in 1851. Since then the most successful country in Olympic sailing has challenged for the America’s Cup 23 times without winning it.
The first final in 60 years for a British yacht ended in more frustration and with work to do after Ainslie, the most successful sailor in Olympic history with four golds and a silver, saw his boat far too often in Taihoro’s wake.
Britain has never won the America's Cup, which began in 1851 with a race around the Isle of Wight off the south coast of England, and Ainslie has been trying for a decade.
The Americans have won it 29 times and successfully defended the title 24 times from its inception until that incredible 132-year run ended in 1983 at the hands of the Australians, when they got their sole win. The Swiss were the last country to join the select club and have won it twice.
The Kiwis made it five America’s Cup wins overall, after first winning it in 1995 and again in 2000.
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