You can buy a lot of things with £100m, but it turns out that a good start to the America’s Cup isn’t one of them. After 10 years of work, Ineos Britannia had the worst possible opening to their challenge against Emirates New Zealand, and went two-nil down in the best-of-13 series after the first day of racing.
Their skipper, Ben Ainslie, and his team need to find a way to catch up – and fast – before the series runs away from them. “It’s not the start we were looking for,” Ainslie admitted, in a rueful expression of the glaringly obvious. “We just couldn’t quite match them around the track.”
