Yachting: For Coutts it's a different team, but same passion

By JULIE ASH

Russell Coutts, the man Kiwi yachting fans love to hate, is ready to put the past behind him and concentrate on his new goal - winning the America's Cup from Team New Zealand.

Coutts ditched Team New Zealand after the last America's Cup to join Ernesto Bertarelli's Swiss Challenge Alinghi, taking Brad Butterworth and several Team New Zealand members with him.

"I could understand the negative feeling to begin with," Coutts said. "But I think the picture has become clearer and people realise why we did this.

"All of us that were involved with Team New Zealand had many great years with them.

"We went through a fantastic campaign together. When I look at it now, we needed some new challenges and so did they."

But Coutts points out that he had not decided to leave Team New Zealand the day he handed the helm to Dean Barker for the last race.

And he says Team New Zealand management was totally informed of all the meetings between himself and Alinghi.

"It's a story I think mostly belongs in the past. The future of the America's Cup - and I mean this for all syndicates - is more interesting than the past."

The future for Coutts is with Alinghi, where he is an executive director and the skipper.

The syndicate started using its impressive new base on Auckland's Viaduct Harbour this week.

The base will partly be opened to the public.

"It is fantastic to have the base up and running and to be a part of the event," Coutts said.

"We have had a great time coming back and it is very exciting to be building something new, something from a blank sheet of paper."

Team New Zealand are his neighbours on syndicate road, and the view from Coutts' office is almost right into his old stamping ground.

"We talk to them offshore and there is a bit of banter that goes on back and forward across the fence.

"There were a lot of guys that had been in the team for a while and it is in the nature of this game that things will change."

Owned by Italian pharmaceutical billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli, the Alinghi name represents joy, dreams, a certain lightness, but also speed and action.

The syndicate arrived in Auckland with two cup boats, Alinghi 59 and 64, and 10 tonnes of equipment.

The team - which contains people of 14 nationalities - now train six days a week, including sessions in the gym, in the classroom and out on the water.

"The complexity of trying to get everything right is something I have liked since I started sailing," Coutts said.

"This America's Cup will be the best we have seen. It will be more competitive because the talent is more widely spread."

Looking ahead to the challenger series, Coutts said the Louis Vuitton Cup was wide open.

"The picture has yet to develop. Every team I look at have their strengths and weaknesses. The one sure thing about this America's Cup is that is there is no sure bet.

"No one thought Team New Zealand were going to win in 1995. There are always plenty of surprises.

"We believed we were going to win in San Diego in 1992. We almost believed winning was inevitable, which in many ways was our problem.

"You learn a lot from winning an America's Cup, but you learn even more from not winning one."

People often ask, what the most important factor is in preparing for the America's Cup.

"I think most skippers would say it is not just a question of having the fastest boat - although that's a positive. But slower boats have won also.

"It is not technology alone, or the size of one's budget, or simply the amount of time spent preparing.

"Since 1987, none of the teams who have spent the most money have gone on to win.

"It seems that often the most crucial decisions are the big ones you make at the start of a campaign."

Coutts, who was also part of Team New Zealand's successful America's Cup campaign of 1995, has been the world matchracing champion three times and won gold in the Finn class at the 1984 Olympic Games.

"I began sailing in a P-class in Wellington. Later we moved to Dunedin and I remember one morning in Dunedin training in Lasers in the middle of winter with my brother, Robin.

"There was dense fog and it began to get very cold. When the fog cleared there was snow right down to the edge of the water. In those days that was what we did. We were there because we loved it.

"I think the spirit and determination and passion of sailing hasn't changed. What has changed is the scale of this event and the way things are done.

"As a professional sailor I think these changes are great."