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Displaying items by tag: Sir Richard Branson

#AmericasCup - Sir Ben Ainslie's next bid for the America's Cup may have secured the backing of Sir Richard Brandon's Virgin empire, as the Daily Telegraph reports.

It's understood that the billionaire businessman and adventurer – who recently hosted the Olympic sailing legend and his new wife, TV presenter Georgie Thompson, at his Necker Island retreat in the Caribbean – has been asked to invest in Sir Ben's namesake team BAR, set up to represent Britain at the next America's Cup race in Bermuda in 2017.

It's not surprising that Sir Richard might take an interest, being as famous for his past transatlantic and ballooning escapes as he is for his business ventures.

And he would be in good company, with Carphone Warehouse founder Sir Charles Dunstone among those who have already pledged financial support to the British sailing bid on the heels of Sir Ben's successful turnaround of Oracle Team USA in last summer's dramatic head-to-head in San Francisco.

The Telegraph has more on the story HERE.

Published in America's Cup

William M Nixon has been writing about sailing in Ireland and internationally for many years, with his work appearing in leading sailing publications on both sides of the Atlantic. He has been a regular sailing columnist for four decades with national newspapers in Dublin, and has had several sailing books published in Ireland, the UK, and the US. An active sailor, he has owned a number of boats ranging from a Mirror dinghy to a Contessa 35 cruiser-racer, and has been directly involved in building and campaigning two offshore racers. His cruising experience ranges from Iceland to Spain as well as the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, and he has raced three times in both the Fastnet and Round Ireland Races, in addition to sailing on two round Ireland records. A member for ten years of the Council of the Irish Yachting Association (now the Irish Sailing Association), he has been writing for, and at times editing, Ireland's national sailing magazine since its earliest version more than forty years ago