Ratcliffe isn't backing down – what the latest INEOS vs Athena court filing tells us

In January 2025, barely three months after INEOS Britannia became the first British boat in 60 years to reach the America's Cup Match, Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Sir Ben Ainslie parted company. Ainslie's team, Athena Racing, kept the AC75 that had raced in Barcelona. Ainslie rebranded as GB1, secured the Challenger of Record slot for the 38th Cup in Naples, brought in Oakley Capital as investors in December 2025, and pressed on. In March this year, INEOS Racing sued, claiming the boat was theirs.

The case is now in the Admiralty Court in London, and the paperwork has been flying.

Athena's 41-page defence landed in late May and made headlines well beyond the sailing press. It alleged that INEOS Sport executives told Ainslie in Barcelona in October 2024 that Ratcliffe would 'burn your house down' if Athena didn't hand over its assets and IP, that INEOS staff padlocked the doors at the Turweston base with people inside, and that INEOS's conduct had been 'reprehensible and improper'. The legal point behind the colour is that a party asking a court for equitable relief must come with clean hands.

INEOS replied in July, and its response was blunt: even if its conduct were as bad as Athena says, which it denies, that conduct has nothing to do with whether the assets should be transferred, so it shouldn't affect the outcome

Athena then amended its defence on 18 August, revealing that Ainslie had written to INEOS in April asking it to consider in good faith letting the team keep Britannia for Naples – a request Athena says was refused 'outright'. INEOS's amended reply, re-served on 15 September and now available through the court, is its answer to all of that. It is one side's pleaded case, not a finding of fact, but it tells us a good deal about how INEOS intends to fight.

The core dispute is clause 4.2.7 of the two parties' Partnership Agreement. When the deal ended, Athena was required to wind down 'to a minimal level' and INEOS could demand the assets it had funded – unless Athena had been 'able to find financial support or sponsorship' to keep campaigning. INEOS says that phrase 'required the Defendant to have secured a legally binding commitment of financial support or sponsorship adequate to fund the AC38 campaign in place of the Claimant', or at least a major part of it, against a budget that Athena itself had put at £210m. On INEOS's account, Athena had nothing of the sort in January 2025, and nothing until their Oakley Capital deal was announced 11 months later. If the court agrees, the boat should have been handed over long ago.

Then come three details that matter most for what happens next.

First, INEOS denies threatening to enter its own AC38 team in breach of the agreement's non-compete clause – but its reasoning is striking. 'If Sir Jim had decided to enter a team in AC38,' the filing says, 'he would have done so through a corporate entity other than the Claimant, namely INEOS Sailing Limited (a company incorporated on 22 January 2025)' – the same week as the split. The non-compete, INEOS argues, binds INEOS Racing alone, not Ratcliffe personally or any other company he controls. Whatever its purpose, that entity exists, and Ratcliffe has a legal route back into the Cup if he wants one.

Second, INEOS confirms it turned down Ainslie's Britannia request on 5 June, the same day the defence hit the newspapers, though it says its board 'considered the request in good faith and decided to decline it for various reasons’, and disputes the word 'outright'. It has also added a second KC, Alexander Polley, alongside Conall Patton. None of this reads like a party looking for a quick settlement.

Third, INEOS addresses the boat itself. AC38 will be raced in hulls from AC37, or modified AC36 hulls, so Britannia cannot simply be replaced with a new build. But INEOS argues that 'the Protocol for AC38 does not require competitors to use the hull from AC37 where that hull is no longer available due to causes beyond the affected competitor's control', and that Athena could have bought one second-hand. The subtext is clear: INEOS wants to head off any suggestion that a win for it means the end of the British challenge.

One correction is also worth noting. Athena says the meeting at which 'scorched earth' was mentioned took place a matter of hours before the first race of the Match. INEOS's July filing flatly denied that. The amended version drops the denial and instead says its executives 'did not arrive in Barcelona until Monday 14 October 2024, two days after racing had started, and the meeting did not take place until later that week'. INEOS admits that Mr Nevin told Ainslie that Ratcliffe 'would not back down (and had only ever done so in a dispute concerning the People's Republic of China)' and that 'scorched earth' was used, but says the words 'would reasonably have been understood to be, used in a figurative rather than a literal sense'.

A trial is expected at the High Court, but not this year and probably not before the Match, which is scheduled for 10–19 July 2027, after the Louis Vuitton Cup in May and June. GB1 will race next weekend's Preliminary Regatta in Naples, from 24 to 27 September, in AC40s, and will launch the modified Britannia AC75 with the question of who owns it still open. That’s an uncomfortable position for Oakley Capital and anyone else being asked to put money in.

The wider event has skin in the game too. GB1 is one of five founding teams in the America's Cup Partnership, in a cycle that has already lost the New York Yacht Club’s American Magic. Losing the Challenger of Record's boat would be a different order of problem. Ainslie still insists 'we have a boat'. On the evidence of this filing, Ratcliffe intends to make him prove it.