INEOS Team UK are the Challenger of Record for AC37 and rumours are rife of them and the Defender ETNZ, holding an America’s Cup in the UK next year with no other challengers.
Speaking to TVNZ, Team New Zealand CEO Grant Dalton confirmed it was on the cards.
Ineos Team UK owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe says no decisions have been made about the next host of the America’s Cup, despite strong speculation suggesting the next regatta could take place in the Isle of Wight.
Jack Griffin of CupExperience.com explains how it could work . . .
This would be good for everyone, including all the teams who expect to challenge for a Match in 2024.
The announcements would go something like this:
- There will be a multi-challenger AC in 2024 in a venue to be announced.
- It will be sailed in AC75’s, with some improvements described in a new version of the AC75 Class Rule.
- The Constructed in Country requirement will be relatively easy to meet, a bit like the rule for the AC50’s in 2017. New challengers from any country will be able to buy and compete in any of the existing AC75’s, and build a new one.
- There will be an AC Match in 2022 on the Solent, under mutual consent, between INEOS Team UK and Team New Zealand.
- The loser of the 2022 match will immediately present a challenge for the following, multi-challenger match, in the expectation of being the CoR for the 2024 match.
- A term sheet for the protocol for 2024 will be released in the coming weeks, allowing prospective challengers to know the conditions.
- Around the 2022 event will be wonderful hospitality opportunities for prospective challengers to entertain and woo sponsors and major donors.
- The new version of the AC75 Class Rule, to be used in 2024, will be available by the end of 2021.
- A design package will be available to prospective challengers.
- A design symposium will be held during the 2022 event, to help 2024 challengers come up to speed.
I hope this is relatively on target. It would be a masterstroke! . . . Jack Griffin
Well that is Jack’s take on the rumours.
Could the New Zealand Government really let this event go abroad?
Maybe not what they would want in an ideal world, but Team New Zealand CEO Grant Dalton has confirmed it was on the cards.
“Certainly the Isle of Wight is an option,” Dalton said. “We want to come back, but we also have to think of the team and ultimately my responsibility is primarily to the welfare and the strength and the ability to defend the Cup.”
Maybe this is just Dalton keeping the pressure on the New Zealand Government in the negotiations now starting on funding the Kiwi team fo the 37th America’s Cup.
But, this left-field version gives them another bite of the investment cherry with someone else picking up the tab, and keeps the ball rolling through the dead-zone period of teams trying to put together teams and sponsors.
It could even just inspire a decent entry for Auld Mug in 2024.
The Brits would love it . . . Cowes and all that 1851 stuff . . . A showpiece Round the Island Race.
But could we really go through all that ‘there is no second’ agnst again?
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