The 34th America’s Cup was arguably the most exciting in the event’s history.

Sir Russell Coutts, CEO of Oracle Team USA, predicts that the next one — to be held in Bermuda in 2017 — will raise the bar even higher.

At the previous event in San Francisco, where Oracle pulled off one of the greatest comebacks in sports history to retain the ‘Auld Mug’, Coutts said teams committed a lot of mental mistakes in the wing sail foiling AC72 catamaran.

However, he believes they will have learned valuable lessons from those mistakes and now have a better feel for the one design America’s Cup catamarans capable of reaching speeds nearing 50mph.

“You watch those last finals in 2013, there were a lot of mistakes probably because the teams had less time to actually think through their next move and so forth,” the five-times America’s Cup winner said. “It was the first cycle in those boats last time, and next time I think you are going to see the best sailors in the world all be more adapted to it, and as a result the standard will be higher.”

Even though much has changed in the America’s Cup in terms of boat design, Coutts said the art of match racing remains the same.

“It’s the same thought processes with the modern America’s Cup boats,” he said. “But it’s just happening a lot faster. You have a lot less time to plan your move and respond to changes on the race track, whether they be change of wind conditions, or changes responding to what your opposition is doing.”

Coutts said advances in boat design since the previous Cup will also add to the spectacle when Bermuda hosts the America’s Cup World Series in the Great Sound in October as well as the Challenger Trials in 2016 and America’s Cup Match in 2017.

“The AC45s are fleet racing, where you have all the boats racing together, so it’s going to be pretty interesting to see who dominates,” he said. “Of course this time in the AC45s you are playing for keeps. There are real points there on the line so if you win the AC45 series you are going to go into the final eliminations with quite a significant advantage. The teams will be racing hard in the AC45s.”

The six participants of the 35th America’s Cup are presently conducting tests in the AC45s which have been equipped with hydrofoils since the last America’s Cup World Series.

The AC62, which come with a hefty $4m price tag, will be used for the Challenger Trials and America’s Cup Match.

“The AC62s come on stream in 2016 onwards and they are of course more of a high tech machine,” Coutts, who is a seven-times King Edward VII Gold Cup winner, said. “You are really going to see some high speeds in those boats.

“It’s going to be fun and this time there’s only eight people on the crew in the AC62 which is going to be really physical on these short courses.

“We had two sailors on-board last time on Oracle Team USA where we tracked the heart work rates throughout the course of the race and also measured things like blood sugar levels afterwards and how dehydrated the athletes were and so forth. Two of the athletes’ heart beat never dropped below 180 beats per minute throughout the whole 20 minute race so it’s an intense physical challenge for the team.”