Great Britain will compete for the America's Cup for the first time since 1964 after beating Italy 7-4 in a qualifying event in Barcelona this afternoon.
Ineos Britannia won the first of two races in Spain on Friday to seal the best-of-13 series against the Italian Luna Rossa team. The British team trained in Mallorca and even established a base in Porto Pi.
The victory means Great Britain will take on New Zealand for the trophy on 12 October.
The team, skippered by four-time Olympic champion Sir Ben Ainslie, have been heavily backed by British billionaire and Manchester United minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe.
Speaking during a Bulletin interview last year Sir Ben Ainslie said: “I have a great affinity for the island. I’ve been competing and training for the Olympics on the island for many years, so on that front Mallorca seemed an obvious choice to establish our America’s Cup training camp. We know the set-up, the facilities in the port are second to none in the world, we’ve got lots of friends and contacts here and it’s a globally respected yachting destination. I think we’ve made the right decision.
“The camp here is going extremely well, we’re obviously going through our test boat for the America’s Cup. This prototype, the T6, is 40 feet. The boat we’ll actually be competing in, the AC75, will be a 75 foot version, but we’ve been getting it out on the water as much as possible, testing various set-ups and reporting all the data back to the designers and technical team at Brackley where they are based with our Mercedes Formula One colleagues F1 Mercedes-AMG F1 Applied Science."
The America's Cup, which is the oldest international sporting competition in the world, having started in 1851, has never been won by Great Britain.
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