Navigating press no plain-sailing

By Peter Calder

Each day on the gulf, rivals Francesco de Angelis and Russell Coutts face only 16 opponents in the race for the America's Cup.

But around two hours after the second boat crosses the line, they face a larger foe - the assembled press corps at the Louis Vuitton Media Centre on Viaduct Quay.

The audience, about 200 strong, is a multinational force. Italian and New Zealand accents unsurprisingly predominate now that it's a two-boat race, but there are plenty of Germans and French as well and a large Japanese contingent. Japan is one of Louis Vuitton's biggest markets, I'm told, and the size of the press contingent may reflect the sponsor's generosity as much as the public interest in that well-heeled nation.

Facing this crowd is a task that neither captain seems to relish much, judging by the expression on their faces as, 10 minutes late, they take their named places behind a white-clothed table.

As Coutts, who turned 38 yesterday, is welcomed with a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday led by the foreign press corps, the smile is reluctant, the jaw still grimly set. Bruno Trouble, the chairman of the media centre, produces a helium-filled balloon and Coutts scarcely bats an eyelid. Perhaps he doesn't like the shape - a snarling Wile E. Coyote who never got the better of his eternal opponent, Road Runner.

Right now it's Coutts - four-up in the first-to-five contest - who's making the running and the expression on de Angelis' face proclaims eloquently that he knows it's his last chance. The fat lady's not singing yet, but he can hear her clearing her throat.

And chances are he's still stinging from the one-sentence release by syndicate boss Patrizio Bertelli which dubbed Luna Rossa's tactics "suicidal" and suggested that they'd given the race to Coutts as a birthday present.

"It would have been better not before the press conference," he offers with a grimace.

The representatives of the two teams are a study in contrasts. Coutts and his navigator, the splendidly moustachioed Tom Schnackenberg, are relaxed but wary, careful not to look cocky and listening attentively and expressionlessly when the Italians talk. De Angelis and his tactician, Torben Grael, by contrast, look faintly nauseous, barely able to smile at their own occasional flashes of gallows humour ("A couple of things have changed since the beginning of the series," says de Angelis with a shrug) and fixing the back wall with a pained expression when the New Zealanders lean towards the microphones.

This is not a time for exultation or despair, but neither is it much of a time for answers. What's evident can be read in the body language but scarcely extracted from the answers to questions which vary from the predictable to the banal.

"Are you still in a winning spirit?" someone asks the Italian skipper. "We just want to do the best we can," he offers helpfully.

"How would you feel if Peter Blake said you were a kamikaze sailor?" Coutts is asked. He demurs, obliquely suggesting it would never happen, but realising he's being drawn into foul air.

"Do you mean he wouldn't say it?" the questioner persists.

"I mean I'm not going to talk about that," Coutts says.

Later, the Italian press conduct their own conference with Grael and de Angelis, thrusting hand-held tape recorders in riotous disorder. But the questions are asked quietly, almost gently.

I feel tempted to see a confidential atmosphere here, as professional boundaries melt and compatriots huddle, sensitive to the inevitable end.

It's an impression confirmed for me later by one of the Italian journalists, who said they felt for the team after the Bertelli release.

"So they were hurt by his words?" I wonder.

"No," he replies. "They just said: 'The boss is the boss. When he praises us he does it extravagantly and when he criticises us it will be the same.'

"They didn't say anything about being hurt by that."