Data / Analytics # 1 - America's Cup Yacht Racing
Tracking the world's oldest sporting competition with data analytics
In the Wind
When I experienced sailing on a family trip in the British Virgin Islands in 1995, sailing gripped hold of me and never let go. It only tightened its grasp on me since then.
There is something about the blend of man’s engineering with wind and water that stirs my soul. Add in the history of the 174 year-old Cup and it’s a marvelous thing to behold.
So, when last year I found out that the America’s Cup yacht race publishes telemetry on matches, I jumped at the chance to get my hands on the data.
Racing Data
After preliminary races in places around the world, the 2024 America’s Cup finals started in Barcelona, Spain. I found a directory of racing data at the America’s Cup website available for public download.
Using Python (a popular programming language in data analytics), I was able to use this public data for some fun projects. I calculated boat speed, location and direction for each boat around the entire 25 minute races. Using this I also plotted performance graphs and charts showing the paths and turns of each competitor. See image nearby of the courses shown on a map of the Barcelona waterfront.
Data Cleaning and Preparation
The vast dataset was tricky to get started with. The race committee did not provide a key to the JSON (a computer format) files. The files are chock full of course data, like boundary locations, GPS coordinates, Unix timestamps, locations of floating marks and sundry other race data. What I wanted was boat specific data like speed and location. After some meticulous trial and error I was able to figure out the boat IDs, timestamps, GPS locations and more.
The Possibilities
With so much rich data on boat performance, this raises all sorts of potential analyses. You could measure boat speeds over different parts of the course to see which teams took advantage of “fast sides” of the course.
You could analyze tacking performance by calculating how much velocity is lost when each boat tacks. Or you could measure average velocity made good (VMG), an all-important measure among yacht racers.
Next Stop Italy
The 38th America’s Cup is planned for 2027 in Naples, Italy. Can’t wait to follow it and I’m sure the technical and data elements will be even more impressive.