The Kiwi are known for having introduced many out of the box innovations that have given them an advantage against their competition. For the last America’s Cup, as the Defender, you created a new flying monohull AC class. For many, those boats would never have been able to sail but instead they began an unstoppable revolution which had a tremendous impact on sailing and even more on watersports in general. What was the original idea and vision behind this choice?
Kevin Shoebridge (Ocean Races and America's Cups sailor):The question often asked is why did Emirates Team New Zealand decide to design the concept of a foiling monohull for the 36th America's Cup, the same boat that is now being used for the 37th America's Cup. And I guess to answer that we really to go back a little bit. It goes back, really, to San Francisco, where I think the America’s Cup at that point has taken massive leap forward from being a fairly traditional sailing sport for over 150 years.
The event in San Francisco (2013) with the large catamarans really was a turning point for the America’s Cup and the sport of yachting in general. It was the first time that we saw really high-performance boats that were capable of doing 40, 45, 50 knots.
And this opened up a whole new viewing audience with how spectacular these boats were. Halfway through the San Francisco event, we managed to introduce the foiling part to that design, which was something we'd worked on secretly in New Zealand for over a year and a half. And that step alone was another massive step forward for almost modernising the sport, I guess.
So, post San Francisco and leading into the Bermuda regatta, oracle was the defender. They took the step again and went for a much higher performance, a 50-foot falling catamaran, which is a really exciting boat. We at Emirates Team New Zealand managed towing that event, and it was then our responsibility to choose the direction of the sport. And at that point, we kind of thought, there's no going back. I guess there was a lot of feedback that a lot of traditionalists wanted the America’s Cup to go back to what it was, which was glamorous looking monohulls. But our feeling was that once the audience had seen boats doing 50 knots, it's very difficult to go backwards. It’s very difficult to go back and watch boats sailing at 10 knots.