THE AMERICA CUP.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 222, 19 September 1930, Page 6

THE AMERICA CUP.

The raefes for the America Cup have ended in the decisive defeat of the British challenger, and it is time to draw some of the necessary morals from these contests. The most obvious of these is that the conditions under which the contests are held impose an impossible handicap on any British boat. The challenger must cross the Atlantic to American waters under her own sail, and this means that she must be built and rigged in such a way as to be well fitted for ocean cruising in heavy weather, and at the same time admirably adapted for yacht racing. To combine" the two qualifications is clearly an impossible feat. In this present instance there seems to be a consensus of opinion to the effect that the Shamrock was severely strained by her transAtlantic voyage, and that she lost something of the speed that she had previously displayed, while she certainly lost much valuable time that might have been employed in "tuning up" and providing against contingencies if she had been built on the American side of the ocean. - The other most important inference suggested by the contest is the conclusion, now publicly proclaimed by Sir Thomas Lipton, that no single, individual can afford to spend lavishlv enough- to ensure success under the existing conditions. No one man in England can afford to spend £200,000 on a yacht, and without that , outlay success is impossible. Therefore the veteran sportsman considers that in future contests the British challengers must be built and owned by syndicates. _ The victor in the races just concluded was built by a number of American millionaires,, and they could afford to spend £650,000 in providing the fleet of four yachts from which the Enterprise was selected. Yachting is necessarily an expensive pastime in its higher* levels, but when the cost of building and equipment runs into millions of dollars, yaeht racing ceases to be a sport and becomes a competition of quite a different kind.