America’s Cup: Through the camera lens

There are very few photographers in the world of Sailing and the America’s Cup like Gilles Martin-Raget, Daniel Forster, and Carlo Borlenghi who have brought the Cup to life through thousands of photos over 40 years. Their challenge: Pick a single memorable photo from each edition to tell the history of the Cup as seen through their eyes.

Daniel Forster:
The 1977 America’s Cup was the first of my many professional stepping stones. It was the first America’s Cup I covered out of 13 events. I was still living in a small village in Switzerland and just started my, by now 50-year, photography career. Having covered the 1972 and the 1976 Olympic Games, I thought, if I wanted to be a yachting photographer, I had to cover the America’s Cup in Newport, Rhode Island.

Going out to sea on the photo boat, a Coast Guard cutter, I noticed the blimp above. So I went to the airport the next day to inquire about a spot on the TV blimp. They told me to return the next day and my aerial photographs made the magazines and a worldwide advertising campaign for Rolex in 1980. Not a bad start for a landlocked photographer….

My photograph of Ted Turner returning to Newport after his victory, with Gary Jobson as tactician, will definitely never be repeated! To see the public waiting, and then cheering from the rooftops is certainly unique. The photograph is a scanned and edited slide, like all of my photos from my archives until 2003. – Full report