America’s Cup: A Billionaire Death Race

What’s great about the organizers of the America’s Cup and their active pursuit of mainstream media is seeing how these ‘outsiders’ spin the story. Among our favorites is Maxim, an international men’s magazine, and their desire to glamourize the event and pretty much everything else they publish.

In August 2014, their interview with Terry Hutchinson, after he was terminated as skipper of Artemis Racing, included critical comments about the team and event which, according to Terry, were untrue and inaccurate. Hmm…

Well, Maxim is back, and while their previous report was in their TECH category, the latest is in their ENTERTAINMENT category, the same category where the trending story is ‘I Had Sex With a Guy in a Cab After Meeting Him That Same Night’. Hmm…

With the flashy headline, ‘Inside the Most Dangerous Race on Water‘, here’s are some excerpts following the recent event in Bermuda:

It’s been called a “billionaire death race”—and features blazing fast, 45-foot catamaran sailboats inspired by Formula 1 cars and funded by megarich moguls who hate to lose.

The Louis Vuitton America’s Cup World Series—still reeling from the tragic death of a British sailor killed after his boat capsized in 2013—saw more wind-blown mayhem on Sunday as the winning team Artemis smashed into an umpire’s boat on the way to beating defending champion Oracle Team USA, bankrolled by software billionaire Larry Ellison.

Spectators filled hundreds of boats bobbing in Bermuda’s vibrant turquoise waters, ranging from humble fishing vessels to massive pleasure yachts. Well-heeled fans sipped Champagne and snapped iPhone pics as the high-tech racing boats capable of hitting 60 mph careened around the course, courtesy of rigid sails and blade-like carbon fiber hulls that fly above water on slim hydrofoils.

“It’s a whole new game,” Oracle skipper Jimmy Spithill told me before the regatta. “There’s real risk when the boats do two to three times the wind speed. It’s just like having a turbo, but there’s no brake on this boat. Once the wind is up, you just gotta hang on and try to get this thing around the course.

“I was speaking to some Formula 1 drivers, and they said it was kind of like back in the Senna days, where they had this massive amount of horsepower in the car and not really the safety limits set up,” Spithill says. “We were all kind of learning along the way, and we learned a lot from that tragedy.

“But yeah, mate, these things are like a race car—the harder you push, the faster you go. And anytime you cross the line, there’s going to be consequences.”

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