When the prestigious America’s Cup holds its first-ever standalone women’s race in Barcelona next fall, Canada will be there and so will Isabella Bertold.
“Right now I am one of the best sailors in the world but if I try and go and get a job as a professional sailor I am told I don’t have experience on these boats,” the Vancouver-based former Olympian and captain of the Concord Pacific Racing team told Global News.
“Of course, you can’t get experience if you don’t have access to it. And this is really creating that pathway and that access pipeline.”
The America’s Cup is the world’s oldest international competition still operating in any sport. The top sailing crews in the world battle head-to-head in multi-million-dollar yachts, often at breakneck speed.
While women have competed in the event in the past, including one all-female crew, the sport has been dominated by men until now.
“We’re going to see more and more women step into the arena of professional sailing through this,” Bertold said.
Isabella Bertold has been sailing since she was five years old, but said even after competing in the Olympics she didn’t see a path to professional racing. That’s now changed.
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Concord Pacific, RBC and Telus announced their sponsorship of Canada’s team for the Puig Women’s America’s Cup and UniCredit Youth America’s Cup on Wednesday.
The involvement of major sponsors in Canadian sailing is a both new and a massive milestone, according to Bertold, who expects it to have a ripple effect through the Olympic and grassroots levels.
Terry Hui, CEO of Concord Pacific, said it was exciting to contribute to a history-making race.
“It’s a very conservative sport, and it’s always a battle between tradition and progress, going from single-hulled boats to two hulls to flying — it went through a lot of battles,” he said.
“But I think this addition is probably the event that makes the most progress. It’s the event that includes the other half of the world.”
Bertold’s team will operate an AC40 yacht equipped with cutting-edge sail and foil technology that set the boat “flying” above the water at incredible speeds.
They’ve already been training using high-tech simulators.
“Think like a flight simulator or a race car simulator, the exact same thing. These boats fly at speeds of around 100 km/h so it’s really fast-paced, intense racing,” she said.
“There’s really no opportunity to make a mistake.”
Tam Matthews, chair of AC40 Team Canada, said the full women’s and youth teams will be announced later this month and include members from across the country.
“This is a huge change, a much-needed change for the sport, and we see it for the competitors, we see it for the coaches, we see it for the judges,” he said.
“I am just so excited to see Canada on the world stage because we are too often too modest, too humble, and we are in this to win.”
Bertold says she’s in it to win it as well, but said victory for her goes beyond taking home the trophy: it’s also about pushing equality in sport forward.
She hopes the introduction of a women’s category at the elite pinnacle of the sport will open the door for female racers to compete side-by-side with their male counterparts.
“That five-year-old, eight-year-old girl can say I want to be a professional sailor, that is the career I want to have, because we are paving that pathway for them and giving them someone to look up to,” she said.
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