America's Cup, the challenge between Emirates Team New Zealand and Ineos Britannia kicks off

The 37th Louis Vuitton America's Cup finally begins: so far the regattas have only been 'challenger selections'. The one these days is the real Match, the real and only challenge. The Defender is Emirates Team New Zealand, a squadron that has always scared everyone. The Challenger is Ineos Britannia, arrived quietly in a month and a half has demolished the Italian hopes of entering the Match and conquering the Cup. Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli has rallied around Patrizio Bertelli and is thinking about the next time: young helmsmen Ruggero Tita and Marco Gradoni are trying to helm the boat, on which they had already climbed after the April launch.

What challenge will it be? This match race based on technology and speed retains medieval characters, when knights took to the field: men were invisible inside their armour. Will it only be a sporting challenge? When Australian Alan Bond took to the course in 1983, who managed to wrest the trophy from the New York Yacht Club with his Australia II, he said, shortly before making a resounding bankruptcy: 'Anyone who deludes himself that the Cup is not also about money is naive. It is: the Cup is an event with international prominence, sometimes not measurable in audience and public but in otherwise unattainable relationships.

The challenge will be entirely Anglo-Saxon: the challenges are formally signed by the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron on one side, the Royal Yacht Squadron on the other. They are all subjects of King Charles III and are names that already tell a lot. How much are the teams worth? The New Zealanders know how to spend little and give value to what they do; it can be estimated that their team, firmly led by Grant Dalton, spends between 80 and 95 million dollars, part of which is 'recovered' from the Barcelona event, part coming from sponsors. The economic soul of the team is the reserved Matteo de Nora, the man whose passion for the environment and life in New Zealand, where he resides many months of the year, and who has been able to inject resources in times of crisis to keep the team alive. He is rarely seen, but is very present, and has prevented talent from being dispersed elsewhere. The team has its own simple character but is always determined to win with an enviable method that no one has so far been able to reproduce. The key men are the helmsmen Peter Burling, an engineer who has been an undisputed talent since he was young, and Nathan Outtridge, who came aboard when it was realised that with these boats it is better to helm two without moving while sailing. They are not the only ones: the real speed builder is project coordinator Dan Bernasconi, Swiss surname, born in the UK, mathematician and engineer.

Decidedly richer is Ineos Britannia, for which one can estimate a value of $150 million, at least, with contributions coming largely from Sir Jim Ratcliffe's Ineos but also from other sources such as the city of Southampton, which has long made important facilities available to the team where it is headquartered. One hundred engineers from the Mercedes F1 teams are said to have been working hard on the development of the boat with the particular involvement of James Allison who was in Barcelona in the very days when Britannia changed its face and became competitive. These are never things that happen with a magic wand, but it means that the tuning has worked. After all, this is the third team that Sir Ben Ainslie has set up, who had stopped in 2021 against Luna Rossa and was not held in the esteem of his opponents. The baronet is the only one who not only helms but also steers. "Our history is linked to the sea," he says, "and this is a piece of history that we are missing. We want it back'.

Something about him, especially the royal friendships, is reminiscent of the privateer Sir Francis Drake, one who built Britain's sea power. The other helmsman is Dylan Fletcher. But there are other heavy names in the union. Among them Martin Fisher, who was with Luna Rossa in 2021. But above all the invisible Grant Simmer in his tenth Cup he has participated in and won as sailor, designer now administrator and CEO. Sinner has a happy hand and has changed the history of the Cup three times: he won with Australia II in 1983 as trimmer, then directed operations in Alinghi's winning campaigns in 2003, 2007 and 2010 to move to Oracle in 2013 and 2017.