While the America’s Cup has always been about the fastest boat, it is ultimately the people that make this ambitious event what it is—the captains, the sailors, the designers and engineers, the builders and the sailmakers, the storytellers and all those behind the scene. And each year since 1993, the Herreshoff Marine Museum, in Bristol, Rhode Island, has acknowledged the greats of the world’s oldest sporting trophy with its America’s Cup Hall of Fame. This week in Barcelona the selection committee inducted four new members.
At the ceremony, held during the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup Match at the Museu Martim de Barcelona, Herreshoff Marine Museum’s President and Executive Director, Bill Lynn, along with Hall of Fame Selection Committee Chair Steven Tsuchiya, and emcee Gary Jobson, presented the new class: sailors Josh Belsky, of the United States, Juan Vila, of Spain, Kevin Shoebridge, of New Zealand, and the late yachting journalist Bob Fisher, of the United Kingdom.
The Hall of Fame also recognized the contributions of Louis Vuitton and Italian sailor and team principal Vinceno Ricci, of Italy. Both were presented with Sir Richard Francis Sutton medals, created in 2018 to recognize individuals and entities that “exemplify the spirit of the America’s Cup.”
Ricci, the skipper and project manager of the first-ever Italian America’s Cup challenge in 1983, the campaign of Azzura, which finished third in the Louis Vuitton Cup during the famous Cup summer of Australia II’s historic win. Now 90 and unable to attend the ceremony, Ricci is said to have inspired Italians to pursue a Cup victory over a span of 40 years.
Louis Vuitton, title sponsor of the Barcelona edition of the Cup, as well as the Louis Vuitton Cup challenger series has been synonymous with the Cup since 1983, a relationship that started with a $75,000 sponsorship and the now iconic Louis Vuitton Cup Trophy. The luxury goods giant has sponsored every challenger series since then, with the exception of the 36th America’s Cup in Auckland 2021.
Pietro Beccari, Chairman and CEO of Louis Vuitton, shared his gratitude in a pre-recorded video message to induction attendees, saying, “I am very honored, humbled and proud to receive the Sutton Medal in the name of Louis Vuitton and personally. We are proud to have accompanied the history of this legendary trophy, sharing the same values as the America’s Cup: the ambition to surpass oneself and the continuous quest for innovation.”
Cup icon Bruno Troublé (inducted into the AC Hall of Fame in 2007) and instigator of the Louis Vuitton partnership has said, “Louis Vuitton has been the guardian of the temple…and if the America’s Cup has managed to preserve its character intact, drawing people and partners of high quality, while greatly expanding its aura, it is thanks to Louis Vuitton, which has in many ways protected it.”
Belsky, present to acknowledge his induction in Barcelona and surrounded by many of his peers in attendance, spent his formative junior sailing years in US Northeast, where he was first exposed to the Cup in 1974, but it was his post-collegiate sailing exploits on the international big-boat scene with American owner John Thomson’s Infinity programs that eventually propelled him to the Cup in San Diego in 1992, running the pit with Bill Koch’s America3 defense. That campaign was followed by an unsuccessful defense trials run with Dennis Conner’s Stars & Stripes in 1995, the year Team New Zealand’s Black Magic stunned the field and emerged as the force it is today.
Belsky’s legendary exploits in the Whitbread Race with Paul Cayard’s winning EF Language program then parlayed to Cup campaigns with AmericaOne in 2000 and both of Alinghi’s Cup wins in 2003 and 2007, earning him due recognition as one of the greatest pit bosses of all time.
Belsky, who now lives a mountain lifestyle in Colorado, acknowledged the value of relationships and connections that furthered his amazing career. “All of the people in here that I’ve sailed with I’ve taken something from you,” he said, before sharing a story from the 1995 Cup. “During the Challenger Series with Dennis, we had a windy day, the day that the OneAustralia sank. Our keel snapped off, was hanging by a thread, and we got towed in sinking.
“A bunch of us worked through the night to change keels, and our fearless leader, Dennis Connor, stayed behind with us and hung out on Betsy, the tender, and had a few adult beverages during the night. About four in the morning, we heard the scissor lift come up, and we heard somebody on deck, and that was Dennis. And he poked his head down below. He looked at us, covered in carbon dust and blood and sweat getting the keel off. And he said, ‘God, I love you guys working this late, it’s fantastic. We’ll get on the racecourse tomorrow. And just remember one thing, the more hours you work, the less I pay you per hour.’”
Vila, in Barcelona with the Alinghi Red Bull Racing Team for this Cup cycle, is a Barcelona native who is recognized as one of the greatest navigators of modern sailing. His affinity to mathematics and race electronics has allowed him to adapt to the fast-changing tools and software employed at the highest levels of the sport. His Cup career spans from 1992 with the Spanish challenger Espana ’92 to today with Alinghi Red Bull Racing. Vila has competed in five America’s Cup Matches, winning three times—twice with Alinghi and once with Oracle Team USA and his accomplishments span deep into the offshore and grand-prix racing realms, including the Whitbread/Volvo Ocean Race, which he won onboard the Whitbread 60 illbruck.
“In 1992 we were kind of a bit of a new team, young and inexperienced,” Vila shared. “It was our first time and we were a bit scared of the world and what was happening and paid our price for being newbies in the game. Quite a few of the crew were smokers and first thing we know we’re reading in the press that all of our competitors had figured out when we were going to tack or jibe because everyone was throwing their cigarettes away.”
Vila says his “big moment” and step up in his career was with Alinghi in 2003 in Auckland. “I was new to a winning campaign and didn’t know if I’d be up to the level required,” he said, “and they made it easy for me so that in the end it was like being at home. It allowed me to be able to continue and be involved in every edition of the cup afterwards.”
Kevin Shoebridge, a four-time winner of the America’s Cup, took the evening to step away from the management of Emirates Team New Zealand’s defense of the Cup against INEOS Britannia, an as expected, the ceremony crowd was dense with teammates and admirers from an incredible Cup career that has spanned more than 40 years.
Shoebridge stepped off on his long America’s Cup path as a sail trimmer with the Kiwi Magic syndicate in 1987’s edition in Fremantle, Australia, where the New Zealanders won 38 straight races before losing to Dennis Conner’s Stars & Stripes in the Louis Vuitton Cup challenger finals. That career has spanned through every New Zealand campaign ever since, with his role advancing beyond the sail trimming team and into the management of the most successful dynasty in Cup history.
“The Fremantle campaign was amazing,” Shoebridge said of his introduction to the crucible of Cup racing. “It taught us a valuable lesson…we were naïve and young. We won a lot of the pre-races, but we didn’t win the races in the end when we were taught a lesson by Stars & Stripes. But it certainly set us on a course. The America’s Cup is won by people, the team is everything and I’m lucky enough to have worked with the best in the world.”
The legacy of Bob Fisher, one of the greats of yachting journalism and a prolific chronicler of the America’s Cup, culminates in his two-volume work, An Absorbing Interest, published in 2007. The 544-page history became an authoritative work for every Match from 1851 to 2007. It includes exhaustive extracts from correspondence between many Cup competitors, some made public for the first time thanks to Bob’s 15 years of diligent research in archives and interviews.
Fisher, a long time Sailing World contributor, was honored and two daughters who said, “Dad was dedicated to the Cup and therefore it is befitting that, being fortunate enough to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, he now be amongst those he revered the most.”
The L’Oreal Group, a sponsor with the French challenge Orient Express Racing Team was also acknowledged for its support of the gathering and for its legacy in the Cup with the America3 women’s team in San Diego in 1995. “Mighty Mary” crew members Linda Lindquist-Bishop and Suzie Leach were in attendance to share insights of the campaign and mark the importance of the Puig Women’s America’s Cup, along with the women’s sailing team with Orient Express Racing Team.
