Ten stars of America's Cup history

Ben Lexcen

Born Bob Miller and abandoned by his soldier father during World War II, Lexcen went to live with his grandparents in Sydney, spending his time at the dock and playing in the water.

"The sea became my parents," he once said.

Lexcen made his name as a designer and multi-class champion but burst into the headlines in 1983 when he designed the innovative winged keel, which he secretly tested in a Dutch towing tank.

The radical design change helped Australia II end America's 132-year hold on the America's Cup.

He had earlier been involved in the design of Southern Cross - beaten 4-0 by Courageous (in 1974) and Australia, which failed in two challenges in 1977 and 1980.

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Olin Stephens

One half of the famous American design team Sparkman and Stephens, Olin J. Stephens jnr, also tagged "Mr America's Cup", designed six victorious America's Cup yachts between 1937, when Ranger beat Endeavour II 4-0, and 1980, when Freedom beat Australia 4-1.

From a family with no yachting background, Stephens and his brother Rod developed a passion for sailing.

He and yacht broker Drake Sparkman formed their famous partnership in 1929 when Stephens was just 21 years old.

By the time Olin Stephens retired in the late 1970s, Sparkman and Stephens had been responsible for over 2200 designs.

They designed every America's Cup winner from 1964 to 1980, including two-time winners Intrepid and Courageous.

Among the many other famous designs to come off the board at S&S were Dorade, Stormy Weather, two maxi racers named Kialoa, four Morning Clouds and numerous production yachts for prestigious builders such as Nautor Swan.

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Tomas Lipton

Long before Britain's most famous grocer and later tea merchant stood behind a counter, Lipton sailed from his native Scotland to New York.

He returned five years later with $500 and a host of ideas on how to expand the family's grocery store.

Within a few years he had 500 shops - the fortune he made from these helped him accumulate enough money to become one of the most famous and generous sportsman in the history of the America's Cup.

But, try as he might, Sir Thomas J Lipton never got his hands on the Auld Mug.

Five times between 1899 and 1930 his boats - all named Shamrock - were beaten by American defenders.

The closest he came was in 1920 when Shamrock lV won the first two races against Resolute before going down 3-2.

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Bus Mosbacher

After starting sailing as a 5-year-old, "Bus" - Emil to his parents - had his own boat as a 9-year-old, a Star class sloop.

In 1935 and 1936 he won the midget championship in his Star and in 1939 won the junior championship and was runner-up in senior Star nationals.

A shrewd tactician and helmsman, especially in the famed 12m class, Mosbacher startled the New York Yacht Club selection committee in the 1958, when sailing the older, slower, Vim he went close to upsetting eventual defender Columbia.

In 1962, Mosbacher was at the helm of Weatherly for the keenly-contested series against Australian challenger Gretel II, won 4-1 by the Americans.

His greatest triumph followed five years later when he skippered Intrepid to a 4-0 win over another Australian challenge, Dame Pattie.

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Charlie Barr

Born in Scotland in 1864, Barr was naturalised as an American citizen in 1899, immediately taking the helm of Columbia.

In an unbeaten run from 1899, Columbia beat Shamrock 3-0 and, in 1901, Shamrock II by the same margin.

Barr's 3-0 win aboard Reliance, over Shamrock III, earned him a 9-0 America's Cup record, which was unequalled until Russell Coutts on NZL60 in 2000 compiled the same record.

Barr, who died of a heart attack in 1911, set a transatlantic record aboard Atlantic in 1905, when he beat 10 other yachts in a race for a $US5000 gold cup.

He completed the crossing from New York to England in 12 days, 4 hours, 12 minutes. It was a record which stood until 1980, when Frenchman Eric Taberly, in a radical 53ft trimaran, clipped almost two days from the record.

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Harold Vanderbilt

Regarded as a "gentleman sailor", Vanderbilt, born in 1884, was a Harvard law graduate born to extreme wealth.

He spent his money wisely investing in J-boats for America's Cup defences in 1930, 1934 and 1937.

First up, Vanderbilt and Enterprise beat Lipton and Shamrock V 4-0.

Vanderbilt found it more difficult in his second defence. Again with Sherman Hoyt as tactician, he had to come from 0-2 to beat well-sailed challenger Endeavour 4-2.

In 1937, sailing Ranger - the last of the J-class defenders - Vanderbilt beat Endeavour II 4-0.

Vanderbilt, who died in 1970, played a hand in creating rules, many of which are still in vogue today.

In 1926, he invented the popular card game of contract bridge.

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Ted Hood

Best known as a sailmaker, Frederick E. "Ted" Hood was also highly regarded as a designer, innovator and champion sailor.

He first became prominent as a sailmaker producing crosscut spinnakers for offshore boats and America's Cup 12m yachts.

Hood sailed in several America's Cup boats, including Courageous when he took the helm to beat Australia's Southern Cross 4-0.

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Dennis Conner

If Olin Stephens was the first "Mr America's Cup", then Conner is the second. Born in 1942, Conner and the Cup have been synonymous since the 1970s.

As well as his much-publicised America's Cup exploits - he won the Cup four times for the United States and lost it twice - he won a bronze medal in the Tempest Class at the 1976 Olympics.

He has been US yachtsman of the year three times.

He has won world championships in boats from 11ft to 80ft.

In Kiel, Germany, he won five consecutive Star class races against 89 of the world's best. He twice sailed in the US Admiral's Cup team and was in the disastrous 1979 Fastnet Race.

Conner joined the San Diego Yacht Club as an 11-year-old and has been the San Diego yachtsman of the year seven times.

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John Bertrand

While Conner was the villain among Americans for being the first from his country to lose the America's Cup, Australian John Bertrand was hailed around the rest of the world as the first skipper to take the Auld Mug from its resting place in the New York Yacht Club.

But it was not the Bertrand family's first flout with the Cup.

Bertrand's great-grandfather Thomas Pearkes, an English master engineer, prepared Sir Thomas Lipton's challengers.

With Alan Bond funding the challenge and Ben Lexcen designing, Bertrand headed to Newport Rhode Island with Australia II.

On September 26, 1983, and in the first America's Cup series to go beyond five races, the Australians beat Conner and Liberty 4-3.

In the penultimate race, later dubbed the "Race of the Century" the lead changed several times in a dying breeze as Bertrand applied the pressure during a tacking duel (47 tacks) to win by 41s and take the cup to a seventh and deciding race, which he won.

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Chris Dickson

Very much the all-round sailor, Dickson won the world youth championship three times, more than 20 races on the world match-racing circuit (including three world championships) and was skipper of Tokio in the 1993 Whitbread Round the World race, winning three of the six legs.

In a return to small boat sailing, he finished fifth in the Tornado class at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

In a famous first, the sometimes feisty Dickson was skipper of New Zealand's first America's Cup challenge.

In the "Plastic Fantastic" 12m yacht, Dickson, in Fremantle, went head-to-head with Dennis Conner in one of the most-publicised challenger sail-offs. Conner won and went on to regain the famed trophy for America.

After he again helmed KZ-7 "Kiwi Magic" in 1987, he switched to join Japan's Nippon Challenge in San Diego in 1992.

Sailing in the cup in his home town for the first time, Dickson, not without some off-the-water problems, returned to helm Larry Ellison's Oracle challenge this time, winning through to the Louis Vuitton Cup final, where he lost 5-1 to Russell Coutts and Alinghi.

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