The initial version of this piece claimed Oracle had beaten Alinghi in 2010 racing a catamaran. It was of course a trimaran.
THREE KEY FACTS
Emirates Team New Zealand announced Naples as the host venue for the 38th America’s Cup this month
Challenger of Record Athena Racing and potential challengers Alinghi and American Magic have since hit out at the defender
Challengers are pushing for more influence and are threatening not to attend without improved transparency.
Amid all the harsh words raining down on Emirates Team New Zealand and the threats from challengers to withdraw, direct and tacit, it is possibleto see the hand of Alinghi boss, Swiss billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli, shuffling the America’s Cup deck.
There is talk in sailing circles of Bertarelli and Sir Ben Ainslie, head of Challenger of Record Athena Racing, working together against Team NZ – a worrying development if the challengers are seeking to weaken New Zealand’s grip on the Cup with a complex and expensive legal campaign.
Alinghi’s latest shot across Team NZ’s bows comes not long after they told the world they were exiting the 2027 America’s Cup in Naples. Cheerio, then. But wait – they are apparently still involved with Team NZ’s protocol, a document which seems about as popular as Donald Trump appearing at a feminists’ conference on immigration held in Ukraine.
American Magic has already pulled the potential withdrawal lever, while Athena Racing and Ainslie are in the unusual position of being the Challenger of Record, but minus a financial backer after Sir Jim Ratcliffe slammed his own considerable wallet shut and departed the scene.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe arrives at the awards ceremony for the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup in Barcelona. Photo / Photosport
That’s where things maybe started to go amiss. The protocol’s establishment of an America’s Cup Partnership (ACP), with challenging teams having much more of a say in, and responsibility for, the format of the 38th Cup, its finances and future cycles, was put together when Ineos and Ratcliffe were still at the table – a partnership in which Ratcliffe was keenly interested. Now, however, yachting folk are hearing that the partnership agreement wanted by Alinghi and Athena will contain many provisions not envisaged by Team NZ, giving more power to the challengers.
Ainslie has not yet announced any financial backing to sustain his team, which is where some think Bertarelli is filling the vacuum – if not financially, then in trying to force Team NZ to accept the challengers’ wishes, a strategy underlined by the almost simultaneous critical statements by the British, Americans and Swiss yesterday.
It’s understood Ainslie has found another pot of gold, but his mystery backer wants to see a protocol that will help reward the many dollars being put in the pot. The same motive applies to Alinghi. Bertarelli is backed by Alinghi board member Brad Butterworth – a longtime rival (some would say enemy) of Team NZ boss Grant Dalton, and Alinghi’s infamous poaching of Team NZ sailors back in the day means the two teams are not close.
Brad Butterworth, Ernesto Bertarelli and Hans Peter Steinacher of Alinghi Red Bull Racing. Photo / Red Bull
Last year, at the Barcelona America’s Cup, Butterworth told Stuff that Team NZ’s running of the regatta was “like a communist state”, with too much focus on money and not enough on a vision for the sport, nor on building a wiser partnership with the team.
The Team NZ protocol now provides for such a partnership. Alinghi have publicly turned their attention to the implied wrongdoing of arranging a venue for the 38th Cup without consulting Athena and Ainslie: “They had no right to do so without first having agreed a protocol with the challenger of record, Athena Racing, who were not consulted on the host venue arrangements which critically impact all challenging teams with regards to cost and logistics.”
Team NZ have cried BS on that. They have a memorandum of understanding with the Challenger of Record saying they had to select and publish a venue within eight months of the final race in Barcelona – which they’ve done. It’s also nonsense that the protocol always comes before the venue announcement. It didn’t in San Francisco in 2013, nor in Auckland in 2021.
In my opinion, Alinghi’s and Athena’s protocol/venue backlash is just another way of pressuring Team NZ into giving them greater powers, confirmed by one of the two challengers not whinging about the protocol (Italy’s Luna Rossa being the other). A co-chief executive of the French challengers, Stephan Kandler, told Stuff that the British and Americans made their allegations to force rule changes in the protocol: “It’s the America’s Cup. Each team is trying to influence the future rules.”
To come into effect, the protocol must be endorsed by Ainslie and the Challenger of Record. To date, Athena hasn’t even signed and returned the Non-Disclosure Agreement necessary to be sent all the final details. Surely, if you’re unhappy about provisions in the protocol, you sign the NDA and then hammer it out with Team NZ.
Instead, the prospect of some form of legal action is becoming more likely. Some are picking that what the deed calls “mutual consent” between the defender and Challenger of Record may break down. If so, one possibility is a Deed of Gift (DoG) challenge – like that between Oracle and Alinghi in 2010, when Oracle’s superior giant trimaran dominated matters, taking the Cup off the Swiss.
Oracle boss Larry Ellison. Photo / Supplied
That debacle began when Oracle boss Larry Ellison took exception to what he (and Team NZ) labelled an unacceptable, self-serving protocol from Alinghi in 2007. What followed was two-and-a-half years of legal action, won by Oracle who, after easily winning on the water, held the Cup until Team NZ relieved them of it in Bermuda in 2017.
That 2010 DoG challenge cost millions in legal costs alone; building monster catamarans for the one-off challenge raised the total bill to US$200 million, according to some estimates, a scenario no defender fancies.
Paul Lewis writes about rugby, cricket, league, football, yachting, golf, the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games.
