Spying is a long-standing tradition of the America’s Cup, but institutionalized espionage? Never before has this been attempted, but this is the essence of the joint reconnaissance program” being rolled out ahead of the 37th America’s Cup in Barcelona, whereas each team will have its assigned Recon Unit watching and recording every move and every sail, and those findings reported back to everyone—teams, media outlets, keen observers and armchair experts alike.
“We came up with the idea through the last Cup,” says Dan Bernasconi, Team New Zealand’s head of design and architect of the recon program. We saw there was so much hunger for information from our fans, and very little coming out from within the teams] except during the event itself. The big driver for me was to find a way to get all of that juicy information captured by the recon teams and get it out into the public arena. think it will make a big difference to our fans.”
Citing a combination of cost savings and safety concerns related to multiple spy-boat incidents during the last Cup cycle, the formalized recon program will force more visual content from otherwise closed team bases and into the hands of America’s Cup content producers keen to build a documentary series modeled after Netflix’s Drive to Survive, the hugely popular show that explores all elements of Formula 1 auto racing. Whereas America’s Cup media cameras and personnel of the past were never welcome guests inside secretive compounds, all teams must now fully cooperate with their assigned Recon Units or face fines and possible point penalties, should it come to that.
This story is from the Fall 2022 edition of Sailing World.
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This story is from the Fall 2022 edition of Sailing World.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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