Australia II Print, Vintage Vela Poster, Australia Retro Wall Art, Sports Gift, Black and White Sports Print

AUSTRALIA II - COPPA AMERICA 1983 — a LostTeams editorial print telling the existing story of Australia II - Coppa America 1983, 1983.

A hundred and thirty-two years. That is how long the New York Yacht Club held the America's Cup, and it is the longest winning run in the history of organised sport. Twenty-four challenges, twenty-four defences, from 1851 to 1983. The trophy was bolted to a table in the clubhouse on West 44th Street. There was a story that the bolts were there in case anybody ever tried to take it away.

The boat that took it away was called Australia II. It was funded by a property developer from Perth named Alan Bond, who had already challenged three times and lost three times. It was sailed by John Bertrand. It was designed by Ben Lexcen, who had left school at fourteen.

The thing everybody argued about was underneath. Lexcen had put an inverted keel on it, narrower at the top than the bottom, with two horizontal wings at the base. It made the boat turn faster and hold a line better, and it was hidden under a canvas skirt whenever the boat came out of the water. Divers were sent to look at it. Guards were posted. The New York Yacht Club tried to have it ruled illegal on the grounds that Dutch engineers had helped design it, and lost.

The final went to seven races. Australia II lost three of the first four. Then it won the fifth, and the sixth, and on the twenty-sixth of September 1983 it won the seventh by forty-one seconds.

In Australia it was about two in the morning. The Prime Minister went on television and said that any employer who sacked someone for not turning up to work that day was a bum.

It did not last. Australia defended the Cup off Fremantle in 1987 and lost it to Dennis Conner, the same man they had beaten, who had spent four years preparing to come back. Ben Lexcen died the following year at fifty-two. Alan Bond's businesses collapsed, and he was later convicted of fraud and went to prison.

The keel is in a museum in Western Australia now, on a plinth, in a room you can walk around on a quiet afternoon.

Hang it. One day someone will ask you what it is, and you will know where to begin.