Coutts, Russell

Russell Coutts, (born March 1, 1962, Wellington, N.Z.), New Zealand yachtsman who led his country’s team to its first America’s Cup victory in 1995.

Coutts won his first regatta at age nine, steering a 2.13-metre (7-foot) wooden dinghy off the windy coast of Dunedin, South Island. Nine years later he became the single-handed world youth champion, and in 1984 he won an Olympic gold medal in the Finn class. He was with the national team when it finished third in the 1992 America’s Cup challenge, but the next year he was rated the number one match racer in the world. In the 1990s he compiled an extraordinary series of international victories, including the Nippon Cup, the Bermuda Cup, and the World Match Racing championships, along with the 1995 America’s Cup.

On his 38th birthday, March 1, 2000, in the America’s Cup sailing competition, Coutts tied a 97-year-old record when he skippered Team New Zealand to its ninth straight winning race with him at the helm. The first five consecutive wins had come when he was leading New Zealand’s stunning sweep of the United States in 1995, his country’s first America’s Cup triumph and only the second America’s Cup victory by a non-U.S. team. His four victories in 2000 were over the Italian Prada team in its sleek yacht Luna Rossa and came in the defenders’ home waters off New Zealand’s North Island. Coutts and his team easily overcame the Italians’ fast starts, but he waited until the fourth race to introduce a secret weapon—a new, light “code zero” headsail, designed for light winds. He appeared poised to lead the yacht Black Magic to the first-ever America’s Cup defense by non-Americans, but, instead of setting a personal record, Coutts had another surprise for the sailing world. In the fifth race of the best-five-of-nine series, he yielded command of the Black Magic to his backup helmsman, 26-year-old Dean Barker, who rose to the challenge by leading the crew to a comfortable 48-second win. Afterward Barker credited Coutts with the victory: “All the hard work’s been done by Russell.”

After the America’s Cup victory and a hero’s welcome in a country where sailing was a leading sport, Coutts remained in the spotlight by joining his design-team leader, Tom Schnackenberg, and tactician Brad Butterworth in taking over the administration of Team New Zealand, replacing yachting legend Sir Peter Blake. Securing and paying a team of yacht designers as well as a crew of sailors, negotiating broadcasting rights, finding sponsorship, and otherwise attending to the details of operating Team New Zealand became the responsibility of Coutts and his two partners. An even bigger surprise was in store, however, when Coutts and Butterworth quit Team New Zealand in May and signed an agreement with Swiss billionaire and avid yachtsman Ernesto Bertarelli to prepare Switzerland’s Team Alinghi to challenge for the 2003 America’s Cup. Under Coutts’s leadership, Team Alinghi brought him his third America’s Cup win, but, after a falling-out with team management, Coutts sat out the 2007 America’s Cup challenge. Coutts was given the honour Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1985 and advanced to Commander (CBE) 10 years later.