The New Ocean-Class powerboat race promises World-Class Adventure
Leisure Boating takes a look at what could become the ultimate international powerboat race in years to come. With adrenaline pumping speeds across treacherous seas in one of the toughest endurance races ever, the Venture Cup promises to be everything powerboat racers, spectators and enthusiasts dream of.
2 400 miles of the very toughest conditions that the ocean can muster up will force teams to crash mercilessly through wave after relentless wave for hours on end over 15 days. This is the Venture Cup, the world’s longest, toughest and most prestigious powerboat race, where technical excellence, bravery and courage join forces to do battle against the elements.
This is a powerboat race of epic proportions featuring multi-leg, multi-day, multicountry racing for boats capable of competing in ultra-marathon events – an event which The Sunday Telegraph in England recently declared the “return of the ultimate glamour race”. The Venture Cup is specifically designed to appeal to mainstream audiences, and in the past this would have been an impossible task. With the racing taking place miles out to sea it’s never going to be a ‘spectator sport’ – outside of pit areas and finishing lines – but modern technology means that it can be a ‘consumed sport’ where all of the excitement can be brought directly to fans, wherever they may be.
As a sporting event in the mainstream this race isn’t about boats, or horsepower, drives, legs and propellers; it’s about adventure, challenge, risk and reward, bravery and achievement.
The crews of the ultra-endurance Venture Cup will be forced to hammer across, through and sometimes under the waves in a brutal, bone-shaking marathon that will often last more than five hours a day, every day, pushing men and their machines to the limit. Boats and crews alike will experience ankle-smashing and hull-snapping forces in excess of 30g, with hearts beating at 150+ bpm, hour after hour, wave after wave.
The organisers will be bringing all of this exhilarating action to consumers in a dynamic way, virtually putting them in the boat with the crews, to experience the tension, drama, and excitement each day brings.
Background
Recent years have seen a number of high-profile offshore powerboat races and series cancelled for a variety of reasons, and the race-teams associated with these events came together for a meeting at the London Boat Show in January of this year to see if there was a better way to move the sport forward.
The outcome of that meeting has seen the establishment of an entirely new structure which combines some of the very biggest and best names in powerboat racing with some highly experienced international event professionals. This new approach has already yielded some major successes and the organisers are fully confident that the Venture Cup will fulfil its potential of becoming not only a top-end powerboat racing name, but a major international sports property. Racing will be conducted with the full support and oversight of both the UK national authority (RYA) and the sport’s global governing body (UIM)…
