There were wild scenes of Swedish celebrations in Bermuda on Sunday as Johnie Berntsson and his team of Björn Lundgren, Herman Andersson and Oscar Angervall made match racing history with a Bermuda Gold Cup hat-trick after beating Great Britain’s Ian Williams 3-0 in a tense final.
Berntsson grabbed his own slice of Bermuda Gold Cup history by becoming the only sailor to lift the famous King Edward VII trophy three years in a row since the event switched to the modern format in 1985.
The Swedish skipper is also closing in on Sir Russell Coutts’s record of seven Gold Cup victories, with the defeat of Ian Williams in Hamilton Harbour on Sunday taking his record to five wins.
Berntsson swept Williams 3-0 in the Gold Cup final, although the races were much closer than the scoreline suggested, and it took some time for him to process his personal milestone. “If you had told me 20 years ago that I would win this regatta just once, I wouldn’t have believed you,” he said. “To now be just behind Sir Russell Coutts, I am over the moon. I have been sailing with this team now for three years and I am struggling to describe it. No other Swedes have ever won the Gold Cup and I look at all the other names on the King Edward VII trophy and it’s just such an honour to be on there with them.”
Berntsson was pushed all the way by Williams, gaining the advantage in the first race after his opponent was handed penalty and coming out on tap of a protracted duel in the last race. “The first race we came from behind and it was just a penalty that gave us the advantage to take that one, so that was lucky for us,” he said. “The second one he hunted us all the way around and it’s never easy when Ian Williams is just behind you. In the last race there was a fight all around the racecourse and he played us so hard. We had dial downs, tack covering, tack to splits and that race had it all. I would love to see it back on video as it was a great race.”
For the vanquished Williams, he was left to rue the small margins in a couple of defeats. “Johnie outsailed us in race two but a couple of races were super tight,” he said. “But in the real tight moments, he just got the hooks he needed when he needed them. That was great work for him and good decision making when he need it.”
