Oracle escapes penalty for now

By HELEN TUNNAH

A mystery device on the back of Oracle's America's Cup racing boat may be an illegal radar but the syndicate will escape penalty, despite using it throughout the challenger series.

Seattle's OneWorld Challenge last week asked the regatta's jury what sorts of radar or lasers were allowed under the racing rules.

The jury has ruled all radars and lasers are illegal, but OneWorld did not formally protest against Oracle's equipment so the results of past racing stand.

That means Oracle's clean-sweep over OneWorld Challenge in the semifinals repechage cannot be overturned so billionaire Larry Ellison's team remain a finalist in next year's Louis Vuitton Cup against Alinghi of Switzerland.

Exactly what the suspected radar system on the back of Ellison's boat does is still not known.

Rivals claim it has been developed using military know-how and may be capable of picking up significant performance data about Oracle's opponents.

OneWorld had asked if it could transmit a cloaking beam to block their boat from Oracle's detection, and the jury has also ruled that would be illegal.

Also caught up in the ruling are the commonly used hand-held laser rangefinders which are now also said to break the regatta's rules, but they provide far less data than a sophisticated radar system.

International jury chairman Bryan Willis said they had not yet asked Oracle what the device on their boat could do, or if it was a radar. No one had asked them to.

Instead, the questions from OneWorld and other teams had been "generic" about what systems were legal or not.

A clash of rules meant that while the protocol appeared to provide some legitimacy for laser rangefinders, another set of rules, in the Notice of Racing, prohibits teams using anything capable of transmitting or receiving information off a boat, including readings on wind speed and direction.

Mr Willis said Team New Zealand and the challengers would be asked for their views on rangefinders and other similar equipment, and officials may ratify their use in the challenger finals and the America's Cup races.

However, that will still leave questions hanging over Oracle's device, nicknamed "the goose".

In answer to OneWorld's inquiries, the jury ruled many standard functions of radars would be illegal.

If Oracle continues to race with the "goose", Alinghi and Team New Zealand may go one step further than OneWorld and formally protest, forcing the San Francisco team to reveal to the jury what the device can do.

nzherald.co.nz/americascup

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