Olympic yachting hopeful Simon Cooke is without a boat as his dispute with former crewmate Peter Nicholas took a new twist yesterday.
Cooke said that Nicholas, who is based in Scotland, had taken the 470 dinghy the pair co-owned and had hidden it in France.
The boat is the one in whichCooke and Nicholas won the world title two years ago.
After sailing together for five years, including at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the pair split up late last year following a falling out.
They ended up being rivals in the national Olympic trials sailed off Auckland in January.
Cooke and new crewmate Alastair Gair are about to head to Europe for the world championships in Croatia in May, an event that has become the final Olympic trial for New Zealand's 470 class.
Before then, they will compete in two lead-up regattas in France.
Cooke said Nicholas had agreed for their boat to be shipped to Europe after the national trials, in which Cooke was third and Nicholas finished near the tail of the fleet.
Cooke said he was not optimistic about getting the dinghy back in time for Croatia. He said the amount of money Nicholas was asking for his stake was unrealistic. But he would continue his bid to get to Athens in August "in whatever shape we can".
Nicholas said the dinghy was sent to Europe because neither he nor Cooke was going to the Olympics.
"The boat was put into the container to bring it overseas to sell," he told Radio Sport. "It's as simple as that. I felt the only fair way to resolve this was to put it on to neutral turf and say, 'Look, Simon, this has to be resolved now'."
