Absent from the America’s Cup since Young Australia in 2000, Australia will return for the 38th edition in Naples with Team Australia. A campaign financially backed by the Winning family, well known in Australia for supporting numerous Olympic sailors as well as the youth and women’s crews at the last edition in Barcelona, and led by a powerhouse triumvirate made up of Tom Slingsby, head of sailing, Glenn Ashby, head of performance and design, and Grant Simmer, CEO. A legendary figure in the Cup, which he won in 1983 as navigator aboard Australia II before going on to take part in eleven more campaigns in various roles (including three victorious ones), the 69-year-old spoke with Sailorz.
People have been talking about an Australian challenge for the America’s Cup for many years. Why now? What triggered it?
John Winning Jr, or Herman as he’s known, really wanted to do it. He started talking about it with Tom (Slingsby), who told him: “It costs a crazy amount of money”. But Herman, who is a wealthy man, replied: “I don’t care, I’m in”. So Tom contacted Glenn (Ashby), who then spoke with the Kiwis [Glenn Ashby competed in three editions of the Cup with the Kiwis, editor’s note]. And of course, Dalts [Grant Dalton, head of the New Zealand defender, editor’s note], who’s got to try and get more competitors to make the event better and better, saw a way of getting us in because the time was so short and we needed a design package and we had to find an older boat. And between the team, the New Zealand guys and Glenn, they conjured up this deal which is a bloody good deal for a new team. It is a one generation older boat [Te Rehutai, the AC75 that won the 36th America’s Cup in 2021, editor’s note], but we’re modifying the boat now. And we’re using most of their design resources to do all of that. So we didn’t have to try and build a design team.
Was the Partnership an argument in favor of launching the challenge?
Wwhether you’re a traditionalist or not, the Partnership means that there’s a real road to continuing as a team beyond AC38 and potentially sharing in the profits and sharing in decisions about the Cup and the future of the Cup. And that was of interest to Herman as well. Because of my age I’m more of a traditionalist than others, but I’m already seeing the benefit in that we feel like we’ve got a voice. We are an equal partner with the other teams. Even if you are a traditionalist, this is a good thing for the Cup and it was also something Herman cared about. Once again, we wouldn’t be here without his desire to do something for Australia. You know, we all become a little nationalistic when it comes to Australians and the America’s Cup!
What’s your target budget?
I’m not allowed to tell you, but it’s the smallest budget I’ve had to deal with since about the 1990s. But time is short too, so those two things go hand in hand, a short budget, a small team. And one thing that I really like is we don’t have any distractions or ‘science projects’ .As soon as Tom, Glenn, and me, and soon others, we’ve got to agree on the projects where we’re going to put our limited resources. And we’re only going to focus on the ones which we think bring the biggest returns. That’s kind of refreshing because there won’t be much wasted time, or money. That’s actually quite a good thing. It puts pressure on us because we don’t want to make bad decisions.
“We should be sailing
in March 2027″
So you already have an AC75. What other assets are you planning to acquire?
We need to build and equip a base in Naples, and we are also going to charter an AC40 and chase boats, we hope to compete in September in the second Preliminary Regatta. For the AC75, we need to build new foil arms and a new rig, as well as produce sails. Bear in mind it is not like we’re an established team, where we have stuff, or like the like the American team [American Racing Challenger Team USA, read our interview with Ken Read] which, from what I understand, bought back a large part of American Magic’s assets. We have none of that, but we have a plan and we are following it step by step right now. Looking ahead, if we go into AC39, and that is the plan, we’ll try to pull together a design team. There’s discussions at the moment with all teams about what the boat will look like for AC39, that has to be decided now by America’s Cup Partnership.
And what is your opinion?
Personally, I think that if we continue to work on reducing the costs, and if there’s a second-hand market for boats, for new teams, just like us, I think we can grow the number of teams. It’s pretty damn ambitious if we think we’re going to win the America’s Cup, but we certainly think we’re going to win a hell of a lot of races. So there’s a market for second-hand boats. And if the big teams want to build a new one, well, that’s a reasonable thing too.
And what’s your schedule then now in terms of next stages?
We’re trying to get the boat as complete as possible before we ship it at the end of the year. And then it’ll meet its foils and stuff when we’re going to build a base. And then hopefully sailing, certainly in March of next year, we should be sailing. So is that ideal? No, but that’s probably the best we can do. And we’ll do whatever we can to make sure when we launch the boat, it’s very reliable, so we get very productive sailing days.
“Tom is at the top of his game”
Can you tell us about Tom Slingsby?
I am biased, but I think he’s a very, very key piece. I think he manages his SailGP team extremely well. And he’s obviously at the top of his game. He is a very important piece of this puzzle. They’ve all got similar traits, like Ben (Ainslie), like Jimmy (Spithill), Russell (Coutts) in his day who was an absolute machine, an unbelievable guy. All super cool guys under pressure. I think Tom’s right up there with the best of them.
Personally, why did you agree to take on this challenge?
You should ask my wife whether it’s a good decision or not! Let’s just say I wasn’t very good at retirement. I was having a go at it since 2024. Really I was saying to all my mates, ‘I’ve definitely got another project in me’. I’m just looking for the right one. And when Glenn and Herman and Tom rang me about this, I said, ‘Yeah, I’m in. I’m in.’ There have been talks about and Australian team over the years, probably by about 2010 or so, I’d pretty much given up on it happening. It is only happening today because Herman made it possible. Today I don’t know if Michael Richleson, who’s a designer with Luna Rossa, may have done more than me. But anyway, we shouldn’t get an award. We should get a stupidity award probably, more than a Hall of Fame sort of award (laughs) !
Photo : Team Australia Challenge
