Italy's Prada could be the first beneficiary from a change being sought by organisers of the America's Cup challenger yachting series to the penalty imposed by an arbitration panel on OneWorld of Seattle.
The arbitration panel yesterday docked OneWorld one point in the challenger series semifinal round now under way, andone point in any future rounds of the competition the Seattle team might reach.
That would include the match against Team New Zealand for the America's Cup if OneWorld got that far.
Today, challenger series regatta director Dyer Jones applied to the panel to alter the penalty, so that instead of OneWorld going into each round one point down, their opposition went in one point up.
The Challenger of Record Management (CORM), which Jones runs, hoped the change could apply from the current semifinals, in which OneWorld are racing Prada. OneWorld beat Prada today by 47 seconds in their first race in the best-of-seven semis.
He said he had taken the action partly because the penalty clashed with the rules governing the Louis Vuitton Cup challenger series.
In the current round, those rules said the first yacht to win four points was the winner, but now if OneWorld won four points they would have only three on the scoreboard, he said.
Nerertheless, the CORM application raises the possibility that under the rules, OneWorld could still win the round with only those three points.
Jones said also said if OneWorld were required to win an extra point, the penalty could add an extra race to any contests in which the team were involved.
He said organisers had a published schedule they were trying to adhere to so the application to the panel was also being made in the interests of trying to complete each round within the number of racing and reserve days provided.
He was confident the five panel members could deal with the application on the telephone, but did not know how long they would take to reply.
The penalty against OneWorld was imposed after the panel found the Seattle-based team had possessed secrets belonging to Team New Zealand.
OneWorld said they had never used the secrets which had since been destroyed.
