If you’re an America’s Cup winner and Olympic medallist, you don’t expect to be beaten by a youth sailor who’s only had a few days in a foiling monohull.

If you’re an America’s Cup team manager, particularly one who has invested unpublishable sums in securing big names for your squad, you probably don’t want to see your headline acts outshone by their junior stable mates.

But if you’re 21 years old and lining up against some of your childhood heroes, the opportunity to try and claim a scalp or two is the motivation of a lifetime.

This weekend eight AC40s will fleet race on a single course – ‘senior’ and women’s/youth boats together. It’s not only the first racing of the 38th America’s Cup cycle, but it’s also the first time female and mixed crews have ever raced the ‘senior’ challenger teams.

For the women sailors, this is a significant opportunity to demonstrate that they can compete on an equal footing with the men. And for up-and-coming youngsters, it’s a chance to take on some of the biggest names in the sport.

Good start for GB1 in practice racing ahead of the Louis Vuitton 38th America’s Cup – Preliminary Regatta Sardinia

Shaking things up

Three teams have two AC40s racing this weekend: GB1/Athena Pathway; the Italian Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli, and Defenders Emirates Team New Zealand.

The British are the only team to have selected two female co-helms, Hannah Mills and Olympic gold medal kitesurfer and former 49erFX sailor Ellie Aldridge. They are joined by trimmers from the Youth America’s Cup team. Meanwhile the GB1 boat is skippered by Dylan Fletcher with Ben Cornish taking the port helm.

But the Brits have some form for using the AC40s to shake the apple cart.

The GB1/Athena teams have just finished a two-boat training camp in Cagliari which saw Fletcher/Cornish and Mills/Aldridge battling it out in the AC40s, and team boss Ian Walker confirmed that Mills & co had taken plenty of races from Fletcher’s boat.

The Brits have been running two-boat training camps for GB1 and Athena Pathway in Cagliari

“It’s been brilliant, the two-boating,” confirms Fletcher in Cagliari ahead of this weekend’s racing. “We’ve been trying to focus on fleet racing, so the sort of the training is very similar to on a big boat, doing 30-40 knots for 7 or 8 hours. And we’ve had some very competitive racing – they’ve taken races off us, we’ve taken races off them, and it’ll be interesting to see how we go.”

The squad ran a similar two-boat training camp in Barcelona, back in 2024. That camp was cut short when one of their AC40s famously caught fire, but not before Fletcher/Cornish had done exactly what they were tasked to do – challenging Ben Ainslie and Giles Scott at every turn in the match-racing focussed training days. So impressive was their performance, that it contributed to Fletcher later replacing Scott on the helm of the AC75.

Ben Cornish takes the helm

For Ben Cornish – a sailor who has performed more different roles in recent Cup cycles than any, as both a trimmer, grinder, cyclor/sailor, and now helm – those days were a big step-up.

“Looking back for me, that was some of the most involved and exciting stuff for me. Obviously reaching the cup match was very special, but for me in terms of pushing my development personally and pushing my capabilities – I felt a little bit thrown into it at the start, but then actually developed through it. And really enjoyed it.”

“I can still remember quite vividly the first day. I was studying the playbook so heavily the night before, and the boat was completely new. Not many people had sailed the class at all at that point. That was like a real baptism of fire, but also I could feel the trust being instilled from Ben [Ainslie] from quite an early point for me, which gave me that confidence to keep pursuing it.”

Ben Cornish is co-helming opposite Dylan Fletcher on the GB1 AC40

For Fletcher, who is now leading the British sailing team, it was a swift decision to invite Cornish back onto the helm. “When we decided to look at the sailing team this time around, I was really keen to get Ben back involved from the start. We had a really good time when we were doing that two-boating – in the B-boat we called it. We had a lot of fun. I think Ben’s just so solid and calm, and I don’t know, he’s just a really brilliant person to have on the opposite side of the boat. And we gel really well together.

Is he a good foil to Fletcher’s energy? “Yeah, effectively I’m slightly more the lead decision maker, and I think Cornish as well is sort of how I was for Ben [Ainslie]. In the offside helm as we call it, you make decisions whenever you need to make decisions, but there’s a slight hierarchy, and sometimes with that there is sometimes a bit of a difference in tempo. Which is what I think is quite interesting because I felt like when I was sailing with Ainslie, I had to be the rock, never change, regardless of how he was. And that’s what I think Cornish is doing nicely.”

20 May 2026. Louis Vuitton 38th America’s Cup – Preliminary Regatta Sardinia. Practice Race. ATHENA PATHWAY capsize.

Youth versus experience

Things got off to a tricky start for the Athena crew in the warm-up races on Wednesday, when a collision with an underwater object sent the AC40 into a sudden crash gybe before a slow capsize. But yesterday’s (Thursday May 21) practice racing was a different story, with Mills and Fletcher crossing tacks in Race 2, before GB1 took the last race of the day.

Above all, yesterday showed just how much of a threat the youth boats can be, with Italian wunderkind Marco Gradoni winning the first two races after duking it out with Pete Burling at the front of the fleet. It’s no surprise that the Luna Rossa squad came out of the blocks competitively – they are they team that carried the most momentum from Barcelona, barely missing a beat before they set up camp in Cagliari and clocking over 100 days on the water already.

The Italian Women’s & Youth team leading in practice racing ahead of the Louis Vuitton 38th America’s Cup – Preliminary Regatta in Sardinia.

But for Gradoni, aged just 22, finishing ahead of the most successful America’s Cup helm in modern history, and Luna Rossa’s most high profile singing, Pete Burling, will have carried an extra edge.

The Italian team has so many potential helms on their roster, that it’s likely to create what Fletcher sagely described to me as ‘its own set of interesting inter-team battles over there that are going to be ongoing’.

This event isn’t a straightforward selector weekend, and a form upset won’t necessarily result in a squad change. But this event is less about winning, and more about how teams handle not winning. If key players or pairings can’t perform under pressure this weekend, then questions will inevitably be asked. And with just over a year until the main event, some quick – and potentially brutal – decisions might have to be made.

Follow all our 38th America’s Cup coverage here…

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

Note: We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site, at no extra cost to you. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.