America’s Cup 2024: What is it, how does it work, race schedule and dates

As Ben Ainslie attempts to win Britain’s first America’s Cup, here is everything you need to know about yachting’s blue-riband event

The 37th America’s Cup takes place in Barcelona this weekend as the British entrant led by Ben Ainslie bids to end the 173-year wait for a first victory.
Ainslie’s crew earned the right to compete against the holders, New Zealand, by beating an Italian boat in the final of the Louis Vuitton Cup – essentially a preliminary round before the America’s Cup proper. 
Ainslie’s Ineos Britannia now faces Emirates Team New Zealand, the boat crewed by the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, in a first-to-seven match-race in Barcelona, starting on Saturday. 
The America’s Cup is the oldest international trophy in sport. It was first held in 1851, predating the modern Olympic Games by 45 years. In the first match the schooner America, representing the New York Yacht Club, came over to the Isle of Wight and beat the best the Royal Yacht Squadron could muster to claim the ‘Auld Mug’.
The watching Queen Victoria was said to have asked, “Who was second?” to which the reply was, “Ma’am, there is no second”. There have been 36 editions in total. Britain has never won it.
The America’s Cup starts on Saturday, October 12. In the race to seven wins, two races per day can be sailed per day on October 12, 13, 16, 18, 19, 20 and 21. The reserve days are October 14, 17, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27.
Racing starts at 1pm UK time on race days and generally runs until 3pm or 4pm.
In the UK and Ireland, live coverage of the America’s Cup will be available to watch on TNT Sports and Eurosport/Discovery. It will also be available on YouTube, Facebook and on the America’s Cup official website.
Telegraph Sport will live-blog every race of the final, with Hannah Snellgrove, the British Olympic sailor, offering commentary and analysis of the competition off Barcelona.
For Ineos Britannia, Ben Ainslie is the most successful Olympic sailor of all-time (4 x gold, 1 x silver), as well as a former match racing world champion. He has won one America’s Cup as a tactician, aboard Oracle Team USA, and is now challenging for the third time with his own team.
For Emirates Team New Zealand, Peter Burling is a Kiwi prodigy. He was the youngest 49er sailor at the London Olympics (aged 21) where he won silver with Blair Tuke, the youngest 49er gold medal-winning skipper in Rio (25), the youngest helmsman to win the America’s Cup in Bermuda in 2017 (26) and the youngest to defend it in Auckland (30), when he also took over as skipper of Emirates Team New Zealand.
In terms of styles, it is fair to say Ainslie is the more aggressive. He is likely to try to engage the New Zealand boat in the pre-starts, as he did with Luna Rossa in the challenger series final to good effect.
New Zealand, who are super smooth through manoeuvres and will start the Cup as favourites, are likely to try to keep their noses clean and then assert themselves in the race. But that could all go out the window depending on who has the quicker boat.
Tough to say given New Zealand have not raced since the round robins a few weeks ago (see below). Ineos did not manage to beat them in that series, but Ainslie’s team have clearly made big strides since then, increasing their boat speed and manoeuvrability across the wind range, while also improving their comms. The unknown is what New Zealand have done to their boat. They were using old sails in the round robins, and they are likely to have made lots of modifications, including to their foils.
The New York Yacht Club won the first ever America’s Cup held in 1851 before successfully defending it 24 times over the course of the next 130 years against a succession of mainly British challengers backed by splendid adventurer-types. James Lloyd Ashbury, the son of a railway tycoon, tried twice without success. Sir Thomas Lipton, founder of the famous tea company, challenged five times over a period of 31 years. Sir Thomas Sopwith, of the famous First World War single-seat biplane, challenged twice in the 1930s on his J-class yachts Endeavour and Endeavour II.
The New York Yacht Club — backed by great American dynasties like the JP Morgans and the Vanderbilts — sent them all packing. It was only in 1983, by which time the Cup match was preceded by a challenger series between the fleet of hopefuls, that a foreign syndicate finally prevailed. Australia II, with its controversial ‘winged keel’ (which survived a legal protest by the NYYC), took the Cup to Perth. Since then, New Zealand have won the Cup four times, the United States have won it with two different yacht clubs, and even land-locked Switzerland have won it twice. Britain has still never won it.
The Louis Vuitton Cup challenger selection series – in order to determine who would compete in the America’s Cup proper – started with a double round-robin stage between the five challengers from August 29 to September 8. The French Orient Express Racing Team were eliminated after this initial phase.
In the semi-finals Great Britain (Ineos Britannia) beat Switzerland (Alinghi); and Italy (Luna Rossa) beat the US (American Magic).
In the GB v Italy final, on the opening day of racing, Luna Rossa took the first victory but Ineos Britannia fought back to make it 1-1. When racing resumed in high winds on Sunday, September 29, Luna Russo were disqualified from the third race but controversially won the fourth. On Monday, again the teams took a race apiece. 
The series really exploded into life on Tuesday, October 1 when Luna Rossa nosedived in the opening race and badly damaged their boat. Remarkably, they fixed some of the damage with gaffer tape and bounced back to win the eighth race, thereby locking the series at 4-4. On Wednesday, Ineos Britannia finally broke the deadlock, winning both races to move 6-4 up. Britain’s 7-4 victory was confirmed on Friday, October 4 and celebrated wildly. 
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