Billionaire Boys Cup (America's Cup 2003)

morpheus 2001 writes "Wired has a story on the fight to win the America's Cup 2003, a sailing race held every 3 years. The story carries the title 'Billionaire Boys Cup', referring to both the competitors and the millions of dollars that it now takes to field a team. This time around the two US teams pit Craig McCaw and Larry Ellison against each other using their respective technological prowess to beat each other and the rest of the world. The story mentions that all of the teams competing will drop collectively over $700 million, with $30 - 40 million to be spent on R&D (per team) alone. The story gives an excellent description of how the use of technology and massive databases work in concert to give a team an edge of mere seconds, which can be the difference between winning and losing a race."

Comments

About as boring as Formula One is now...

[torpor]

... and I mean that: Formula One is boring.

Bringing in all sorts of high tech crap to make your boat/car go faster is one thing.

Sailing using your hands, eyes and ears instead, is something entirely different.

Given the choice between watching a bunch of Rich Borgs re-compile their trim calculation program in between tacks, and watching real men sale real boats, I'd take the real boats.

And I come from Perth (near Fremantle). We were *proud* to have made a technological dent in the history of the America's Cup, but frankly I think it was a bad, bad day when technology trumped the Americans. It just gave them fodder they needed to destroy the true spirit of sports like this.

Americas Cup = Formula One = Robo Wars. Same thing, different toys.

Yawn.