Farewell to Alan Bond, the man who snatched the Cup from the Yankees

Gone (due to a post-surgical complication after heart surgery) is Alan Bond, the controversial Australian billionaire (he also did two months in jail for bankruptcy in 1992) who will remain in sailing history for being the first, in 1983, to snatch the America’s Cup from the Yankees after 132 years.

ENGLISH IMMIGRANT WHO SUCCEEDED WHERE THE BRITISH FAILED
How did he accomplish the feat? Surprising the Americans instead of trying to copy them by presenting a boat, Australia II (captained by John Bertrand, designed by Ben Lexcen), with a keel fitted with “fins” that was the center of a furious and endless controversy. We told you about it in this article. Bond, who was born in 1938 in London and emigrated to Perth at the age of 12, was a very determined fellow: from being an apprentice painter, he came to control all the billboards in Perth within a few years, and then began building houses, neighborhoods and harbors. It cannot be said that he arrived to raise the “Auld Mug” (old jug, as the America’s Cup is called in the jargon) to the sky by chance: in ten years he set up no less than three challenges 1974, 1977 and 1980, all unsuccessful, before he succeeded in the coup. Ironically, it was an English immigrant who succeeded in what the British, since 1851 (the year the schooner America won the then Hundred Guineas Cup against the British), kept failing at.

LOVE OF SAILING
His personal sailing career is also studded with success: he won the legendary Sydney Hobart (Australia’s great 628-mile classic from Sydney to Hobart, Tasmania) twice, in 1978 and 1985, with the 18-meter sloop Apollo. Also with Apollo, he represented Australia at the Admiral’s Cup (the British regatta with start and finish at Cowes open to national teams, each of which consisted of three boats).