KEY POINTS:
America's Cup-winning skipper Brad Butterworth says Team New Zealand is run in an autocratic way and may not be able to make it to the next level.
Asked to compare his team, Alinghi, with Emirates Team NZ, he made a pointed assessment of the Kiwi team and, by
implication, boss Grant Dalton, when he said: "I think there is a big difference in culture between the two teams. Team NZ is run in a pretty autocratic way.
"I think you can get to a certain level that way but I find it difficult to think that they will go higher than that, the way the team is managed.
"Just because you run the campaign doesn't mean you should be on the boat," he said. "You put your best team on the boat."
Butterworth, who said he made his decision to stay with Alinghi before the just-completed regatta began, saw it as vital to keep the "Kiwi tight five"- Simon Daubney, Warwick Fleury, Murray Jones and Dean Phipps and him - together. "I want to stay with this team, that is for sure."
Speaking after a night of celebrations, Butterworth said of the link with the tight five: "We have always been mates; we have sailed together for years and we talk about what we are going into ahead of time.
"It is excellent to sail together and now that we have won this thing. It makes our friendship better and our skills better and we want to do it again. It's important [to stay together] because that has been our career and our strength. Why would we break that up?"
Of the other sailors in the tight five, Butterworth said all had made a great investment in the Alinghi team. "We are now a team that is well established and we [the tight five] have got a lot of ownership of this team. That's great and we don't want to leave."
Butterworth's win gives him enormous bargaining power with team boss Ernesto Bertarelli.
If the scuttlebutt is to be believed, Butterworth has been on about $5 million for his two Alinghi campaigns, in 2003 and 2007. BMW Oracle skipper Chris Dickson was said to have been making about $6 million a year.
Meanwhile Russell Coutts is still waiting in the wings.
Butterworth said he still didn't know what Coutts would do in terms of an America's Cup syndicate for the next regatta but said it would be fantastic if Coutts came back to Alinghi and his old job, although he did not think that would happen.
Butterworth also dismissed speculation that his house-building plans on Waiheke had been a pointer to his return to New Zealand.
"The place is just a bach. Okay, I am building a home that I would love to live in quietly and privately."
Butterworth said he would return to live lakeside in Geneva. "I love it there. We have made a lot of friends ... and my kids are going to school there."