Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The 2013 America's Cup: The Greatest Comeback in Sports History

Episode Date: May 20, 2021

Comeback stories are some of the best stories in sports. Whether it is coming back from a huge deficit, or being on the brink of elimination in a series, these are often some of the most dramatic moments in sports history. They don’t happen that often because once you are down by a large amount, the odds of a comeback become minuscule. There was one comeback, however, which stands out above all others. Learn more about the 2013 America’s Cup on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Comeback stories are some of the best stories in sports. Whether it's coming back from a huge deficit or being on the brink of elimination in a series, these are often some of the most dramatic moments in sports history. They don't happen that often, however, because once you're down by a large amount, the odds of a comeback become minuscule. There was one comeback, however, which stands out above all others. Learn more about the 2013 America's Cup and the highly improbable ending on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. If your perceptions about the past were wrong.

ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night and how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. This episode is sponsored by the Restoration Depot. I've told you before about the Restoration Depot and how they provide a one-stop shop for virtual wellness services that support the social, emotional, physical, and intellectual well-being of individuals. They offer a multitude of live courses with instructors that you can interact with online. They have courses like Mindful Meditation with Kristen Doherty, a certified mindfulness meditation instructor,

or dance fitness with the Karazai method with its inventor, Evan Karazai. Check out all of the options at the Restoration Depot.com and try your first class for only $5.5, by selecting first-class special at checkout. Once again, go to the Restoration Depot.com. I'm guessing that most of you are not into high-end competitive yachting, where ships can cost tens of millions of dollars. If you are, please become a supporter over at patreon.com. For everyone else, a bit of background on the America's Cup is in order.

The America's Cup is the top prize in competitive sailing, and it is the oldest international competition of any sport in the world. The first competition was held in 1851. The British Royal Yacht Squadron created a competition known as the Royal Yacht Squadron 100-pound Cup. The contest was to race around the island of White in southern England. The winner of the race was a yacht called America, which was owned by a consortium of owners from the New York Yacht Club. The owners of the yacht donated the trophy they won to the New York Yacht Club for the purpose of establishing a perpetual international competition. The prize was renamed the America's Cup after the yacht, which was the first winner,

and the terms of the cup competition were governed under a deed of gift given to the club. The America's Cup has very odd rules compared with most sporting events. The time and place of the contest are determined by the defending champion. They also get to set the rules that the competition will be run under. Several years before the competition will take place, the defending yacht club will release specifications for the yachts in the next competition. The challenging team is determined via a competition, which is now called the Prada Cup. The winner of the Prada Cup will then compete against the defending team in the Americas Cup.

In 2013, the defenders were the Golden Gate Yacht Club in San Francisco and Team Oracle USA. As the name would suggest, the team was sponsored by Oracle and its billionaire owner Larry Ellison. Ellison was happy to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at the project to win. The yacht specifications for 2013 were called the AC-72. These were and still are the fastest class of sailing ships ever designed. They were catamaranes that used a wing sail instead of a traditional sail. A wing sail is more like an airplane wing than a normal cloth sail. The ships also had a hydrofoil underneath the hulls of the catamaran.

A foil would literally lift the ship out of the water once it reached high enough speeds. With a foil and a wing sail, the ships could actually go faster than the wind. quite a bit faster, in fact. They averaged 1.8 times the wind speed. Emirates Team New Zealand set a record going 2.79 times wind speed. They hit a speed of 44.15 knots in a 15.8 knot wind. That speed equates to 81 kilometers per hour or 50 miles per hour. The series used to determine the challenger was won by Emirates Team New Zealand,

making them the official challenger for the America's Cup. The 2013 America's Cup was to be determined by the first team to get to nine points, with one point being earned for each win. However, there was a catch. In the two years prior to the competition, the Golden Gate Yacht Club held a series of races called the America's Cup World Series. During these races, the defending Team Oracle was caught using bags of lead pellets in one of their catamaranes giving them extra weight, and this was against the rules. An international committee that enforced the rules gave Team Oracle a penalty. Three members were kicked off the team, they were fined $250,000, and most importantly, they were given a two-point penalty for the America's Cup.

That meant Team Oracle would get zero points for the first two races they won, in effect meaning they had to win 11 races, whereas Emirates' team New Zealand only had to win nine. They basically started the competition at a negative 2 to 0 disadvantage. Things did not go well for the Americans to start. The Kiwis dominated right off the bat. After 11 races, they were ahead eight points to one. They only needed one more win, and the cup would be theirs.

Team Oracle actually won three races, but their two-point penalty meant they were still in a massive hole. They had to win the last eight races in a row without losing a single one to keep the cup. Just to put this into perspective, of the hundreds of seven-game series, which have been conducted in professional hockey, baseball, and basketball. A team has only come back from an 0-and-3 start five times. It's happened four times in the National Hockey League and once in Major League Baseball. It has never happened in the NBA.

Even outside of those sports, globally, it's only happened a very small number of times in any sport that has had a seven-game series. Team Oracle didn't need to win four in a row, which is extremely rare. They had to win eight in a row, and they couldn't lose a six. single one. Even if each race was a 50-50 proposition, they had only a 1 and 256 chance of pulling it off. Given the dominance of Team New Zealand, their odds were significantly worse. While the defender in the America's Cup has many advantages by determining the rules and venue, one major disadvantage is that they don't get to compete until the event itself. The Challenger, however, would have had an entire series for their crew to work together and get their kinks worked out.

In theory, the Oracle boat was faster. They had put an enormous amount of engineering into it. Likewise, the Oracle team was incredibly experienced. The problem was, is that those two things were not meshing. The crew was experienced at regular sailing, and the yacht wasn't a regular sailboat. Team Oracle figured out that the issue was foiling when sailing against the wind. When you sail against the wind, you can either take a more direct route, which is slower, or you can take a wider angle against the wind which is longer, but faster.

Under the ships was the before-mentioned hydrofoil. At high speeds, the ship would literally rise out of the water and ride on the foil. Going with the wind, both teams would foil, but going against the wind, only New Zealand was foiling. The American computer simulations had given them the wrong advice. Their simulations told them to take the shorter route. The computers, however, hadn't taken into consideration just how fast the ships were sailing. The Americans had to change plans. Instead of taking the more direct, slower approach when going against the wind,

they were now going to take a longer, faster route, which is what the Kiwis were doing. They had one day off between races, where they could go out and practice this technique. They had spent years training doing the exact opposite, and now they had one day to practice doing something completely different. Each race was sudden death elimination for the Americans. Over the next week, the Americans won and kept winning. Their margins of victory were comfortable, but a few were quite close, winning by margins of 15 and 17 seconds. On September 25, 2013, in the 19th and final race, Team Oracle representing the Golden Gate Yacht Club,

beat Emirates Team New Zealand by 44 seconds, winning the America's Cup 9 points to 8. They did so despite starting the competition with a 2-point handicap and despite being down 8 points to 1 at one point. The 2017 America's Cup was held in Bermuda, and it was a rematch between the same two teams. This time, however, Emirates Team New Zealand won seven points to one, despite themselves starting with a one-point handicap this time. Emirates Team New Zealand won again in 2021 in Auckland, and will be defending once more in 2025. Given past competitions, it's unlikely that we will ever see one like the 2013 America's Cup again. Statistically speaking, it was the greatest cup.

back in the history of sports. The associate producer of Everything Everywhere daily is Thor Thompson. If you'd like to support the show, please donate over at patreon.com. There is content only available to supporters, merchandise, and even opportunities for a show producer credit. If you know someone you think would enjoy the show, please share it with them. Also remember, if you leave a five-star review, I'll read your review on the show.