A Brief History
On September 26, 1983, Australian 12-metre-class yacht, Australia II, finally won an America’s Cup yacht race, the first time in 132 years that the Cup was lost by an American sailboat representing the New York Yacht Club.
Digging Deeper
Australia II represented the Royal Perth Yacht Club in the prestigious sailing race, defeating the American entry, Liberty, to end the longest win streak in sporting history. The race dates back to 1857 and is not held every year, with 37 races so far. American teams have won 30 of those competitions.
Some other sporting win streaks by comparison include:
In 1916, Major League Baseball team the New York Giants won 26 games.
In 1971, NBA pro-basketball team the LA Lakers won 33 games.
From 2003 to 2004, NFL pro-football team the New England Patriots won 21 consecutive games.
From 2014 to 2017, women’s college basketball team the UConn Huskies won 111 regular season games, 126 games counting playoffs!
From 1957 to 1967, women’s high jumper Iolanda Balas of Romania earned 150 consecutive victories and two Olympic Gold Medals to go with 14 World Records.
Question for students (and subscribers): What win streak do you find most impressive? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Coffin, Roland. The America’s Cup: How It Was Won By The Yacht “America” In 1851 And Has Been Since Defended. Digital Text Publishing Company, 2010.
Hayes, Neil. When the Game Stands Tall, Special Movie Edition: The Story of the De La Salle Spartans and Football’s Longest Winning Streak. North Atlantic Books, 2014.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by CTBOLT of Australia II as seen in the WA Maritime Museum, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.