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. <\/b><\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
The victory means Great Britain will take on New Zealand for the trophy on 12 October.<\/p>\n
The team, skippered by four-time Olympic champion Ben Ainslie, have been heavily backed by British billionaire and Manchester United minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe.<\/p>\n
“It’s a massive day for our team,” Ainslie said on the America’s Cup live broadcast.<\/p>\n
“This moment is for you.”<\/p>\n
Speaking exclusively to BBC sports editor Dan Roan in Barcelona, Ratcliffe said: “It’s 60 years since we’ve been in this place. They sailed a faultless race today.<\/p>\n
“This is right up there really. It’s not followed by the mass public, but I think in the UK now it’ll pick up momentum, and it should do because it’s the oldest international trophy in the world and the only one we haven’t won.”<\/p>\n
Ineos Britannia built up a 150m lead on Luna Rossa after the first leg of eight but saw the gap closed to under 30m after the fifth leg.<\/p>\n
But the British team once again extended their lead, finishing around 300m clear of the Italians. <\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Great Britain will compete for the America’s Cup for the first time since 1964 after beating Italy 7-4…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386111,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-386110","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-northern-ireland","14":"tag-scotland","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115120669025829560","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}