Bertarelli's schoolboy dream that came true

By HELEN TUNNAH

As a child, Ernesto Bertarelli dreamed of sailing in the America's Cup, hanging posters of the Auld Mug and racing boats on his bedroom wall.

Now the Italian-born pharmaceuticals billionaire, head of Europe's largest biotech company, can savour the real thing.

Bertarelli has lifted the America's Cup at his first challenge, winning with a syndicate that did not exist three years ago.

This week he will spirit the Cup to Geneva having become involved only during the last regatta when he flew here to explore whether he could put together a Swiss team.

Even then, he went home disillusioned, thinking "this is too big for me".

But he had a change of heart.

"I guess I was contaminated by the virus."

With his childhood friend and fellow sailor Michel Bonnefous, Bertarelli set about starting his own syndicate.

The pair heard the winning New Zealand boats NZL57 and NZL60 might be for sale. Bertarelli began to ask questions, and Geneva-based New Zealander Sir Michael Fay put him in touch with then Team New Zealand skipper Russell Coutts.

Coutts told Bertarelli the boats were not for sale, but he asked to meet anyway. He wanted to know if the Swiss billionaire could be persuaded to help back a New Zealand team, or perhaps lease one of the 1995 winning boats.

Bertarelli was not interested in funding someone else's campaign. He wanted his own challenge and made Coutts, and his long-time tactician Brad Butterworth, a lucrative offer to join him. He says he did not set out to raid Team New Zealand, but he quickly realised all was not well with them - "the perfect team was not the perfect set-up".

Unable to get from the former trustees a legal commitment which would have handed them the leadership of Team New Zealand, Coutts and Butterworth left in May 2000.

Bertarelli handed Coutts the leadership role in management that his critics at home had not thought he was good enough for.

With Bertarelli busy, Bonnefous and Coutts as executive directors began to plan a campaign that would need to be competitive within 2 1/2 years.

On Coutts' urging, their first move was to ask Rolf Vrolijk to become the team's lead naval architect. The Dutchman had designed Bravo Espana for the 1999-2000 challenger series, a boat that failed to make the semi-finals.

Coutts and Vrolijk could call on US$550 million to put together the research and design team they wanted.

By August 2000 Bertarelli filed a challenge with the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron to sail for the Societe Nautique de Geneve but Team New Zealand was not about to take the poaching of its crew lying down.

Despite a Swiss team competing here three years ago, the New Zealanders complained to the sport's Arbitration Panel.

The rules say a competing yacht club must have an annual regatta on the "arm of the sea". Switzerland, they said, was landlocked and the club had no such sea event.

While Bertarelli's legal team was arguing their case, Coutts and Bonnefous announced German triple Olympic gold medallist Jochen Schuemann had been signed as principal sailing coach.

Schuemann had helmed the Swiss boat Be Happy three years earlier in a campaign that failed to even complete the early rounds because of a lack of money.

His arrival was vital. He drove the backup boat against Coutts, and trained the multinational crew, many of whom had not sailed together before.

"Kiwi" became the official on-the-boat tongue.

"One of the most challenging things was trying to get a culturally very mixed group of people to work together in an organised way," Coutts admitted.

It was not all just Coutts.

According to Patrick Aebischer, president of the Federal Institute of Technology, one of Alinghi's technical partners, "Ernesto is an extraordinary teambuilder. When you compare him to someone like Larry Ellison, Ernesto motivates the team without putting himself at centre stage."

Coutts had taken with him not only Butterworth, but four long-time sailing partners, also all unbeaten in two America's Cups. The arrival of Simon Daubney, Warwick Fleury, Murray Jones and Dean Phipps, completed the gutting of Team New Zealand's winning crew from 2000.

As well as their crewing nous, they had considerable knowledge of the design of NZL60.

The Arbitration Panel late last year said that although there were rules restricting the transfer of design technology between teams, there was nothing to prevent a sailor or designer using information stored in his memory. Team New Zealand members had no restraint-of-trade clauses in their contracts.

By now Alinghi had won their first battle. The Arbitration Panel accepted their entry.

But it was not to be the last legal stoush. Coutts had transformed the old Swiss Be Happy, the cumbersome twin-keeled boat, to radically transform it but under the racing rules teams are tightly restricted about how much an existing boat can be altered.

Alinghi altered Be Happy without officials' permission, and the Arbitration Panel declared they had broken the rules. They were fined US$3000.

As the new-look SUI59 was rolled out of the boatyard, in mid-2001, work began on Alinghi's first new boat.

Meanwhile, Coutts and the sailing team trained in Europe - heading to Cowes for the America's Cup jubilee regatta where they won the 12-metre championship in an Australian yacht, beating the boat that sparked our love affair with the America's Cup, KZ7.

Soon after Coutts transferred his new Alinghi team to New Zealand and they have worked here extensively since November 2001.

Soon after SUI64 was launched in November 2001 it was back in the shed for changes. The subsequent improvement in speed was so great that sailing it against SUI59 was pointless.

Australian Grant Simmer, who had joined Alinghi as the design team co-ordinator, revealed that in the first six months of testing with SUI64, its speed increased another 90 seconds around the track.

Since the start of the challenger series, Alinghi estimate the boat has picked up another 30 seconds. While SUI64 is the oldest of all the boats built for the 2003 Cup, it has easily the best record, losing just three races in the challenger regatta. Coutts and his core group of New Zealand sailors are now unbeaten in three America's Cup regattas, a record unrivalled in the modern history of the event.

"To be successful in the Louis Vuitton and America's Cups you have to make sure that you are improving faster than everyone else," said Coutts.

"The way we try to do this is to look very closely and honestly at our strengths and weaknesses."

When Bertarelli was deciding whether to work with Coutts, he says, he knew he was getting the best and ultimately decided to form a team with him because he would regret it forever if he did not.

"When I am sitting there in the middle of the conversation over tactics and strategy and you have Murray, Brad, Jochen and ultimately Russell, it's Mecca.

"It's unbelievable, absolutely wonderful."


nzherald.co.nz/americascup

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