Canada's Challenge for Women's and Youth's America's Cup
by Sail Canada 18 Feb 2023 05:23 AEDT
Isabella Bertold will skipper Team Canada's entry in the Women's America's Cup © Richard Lam
History will be made when an all-female Team Canada entry will participate in next year's first only Women's America Cup. A well as the Women only, addition to the Americas Cup we will be sending a Youth's Team to the 37th America's Cup in Barcelona, Spain. After 137 years as a male sport, women and youths will compete for their own America's Cup Trophy.
The Team Canada crew will be led and skippered by Isabella Bertold, Canada's top female racer who ranks second in the world. Team Canada's CEO will be Jim Turner, an Olympian, 15 times world champion and three-time America's Cup racer.
"Sailing is a unique sport in that men and women can compete head-to-head on an equal playing field. I know this because I grew up racing against the men. I went on to win multiple World Cup medals and achieve a world ranking of second," Isabella Bertold says.
The Team Canada Youth's crew will consist of female and male's sailors under 25. The Youth's Team will be captained by Andrew Wood a Royal Van member and very accomplished world class sailor. This will be the third time the youth's will be competing in their America's Cup. They will be competing in the same four person AC40s as the women.
The Team Canada training center will be at the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club Jericho facility and in Auckland New Zealand. Canada's best female sailors and youths will be recruited to compete in the first ever Women's and Youth's America's Cup.
"This is an opportunity to gain worldwide recognition for the advancement of women and youth, for bringing prominence to Canada's world-beating sailors, and to create a foundation for future generations of high-performance competitors," Jim Turner says.
The race will see twelve identical 40-foot carbon composite mono hull foiling sailboats - one for each country - compete with four sailors reaching speeds up to 75 kilometers per hour.
The America's Cup will take place in October 2024 and is broadcast on 55 major global television networks with a reach of 941 million viewers.
Next summer 2024, the AC40 racing boat will be available for public viewing in Vancouver at a beach side experience centre which will feature a simulator for team training.
"We will thrust Canadian women and youths to the forefront of competitive racing on the world's grand stage at the 37th America's Cup while building a legacy platform for the next generation of world-class high-performance sailors and America's Cup competitors for our country," Jim Turner says.