Well the wind has been truly dire over the Valencian winter, so all those teams that took themselves elsewhere for some off-season training will be feeling very smug now. Victory Challenge's month of two-boat training in Dubai was rewarded with perfect winds throughout, giving the Swedes the opportunity to race their two workhorse boats into the ground. Veteran British match racer Chris Law was flown in to give Magnus Holmberg a hard-time in the team's match racing sessions, and by the sound of it the Swedes got their money's worth out of Law. So fierce was the racing that one boat even had its stern scoop knocked off when things got a little too intense. Both the sailing crew and shore teams came home from Dubai feeling a little the worse for wear, but hopefully it will have battle-hardened them for the long season ahead.
Dubai has actually witnessed more America's Cup racing than anywhere else in the world in recent months, as Alinghi has been staging the first round of its in-house race series, called the UBS Dubai Defender Trials. The first round consisted of six matches, and while Peter Holmberg took an early lead in the series, Ed Baird bounced back on the last day to win both heats. This left the two helmsmen tied 3-3, but the tie was broken by who won the last race, handing a round one victory to Baird. The two helmsmen and their respective teams are taking it in turns to race SUI-91, the new boat built last year, and SUI-64, the Cup winner from Auckland 2003.
Team skipper and tactician, Brad Butterworth, sounded pleased with the way the in-house racing was going: "We've been sailing with each other a lot over the last few months and the standard of crew work and the way that we sail the boats has improved since we started racing. There's a winner and a loser in these regattas and it puts a lot more pressure on the crew. We're trying to emulate a Louis Vuitton Cup and this is the best we can do. I think it is everything that we have asked for and I'm looking forward to the next one." Round 2 takes place toward the end of February, at the end of which the helmsman and afterguard for Louis Vuitton Act 13 in April will be announced.
The question of who will steer Alinghi continues to be one of the big points of gossip in sailing club bars, the spectre of Russell Coutts hanging over the Swiss even now, a good three years after his acrimonious split with Ernesto Bertarelli. Some conspiracy theorists still refuse to rule out the possibility of Coutts making an eleventh-hour comeback. The announcement of Australian match racing veteran Peter Gilmour as a match racing coach has only added fuel to the fire, with journalists speculating that here is a clear sign of Butterworth's lack of faith in his choice of helmsmen. Such speculation seems a little unfair, although it could be argued that after Russell Coutts, Gilmour could claim to be the next most successful match racing helmsman of the past 20 years.
Could Gilmour even end up taking the helm for Alinghi in the America's Cup Final this summer? That's certainly not the team's stated intention. Butterworth says the Australian's involvement is strictly in an advisory capacity. "We look forward to having Peter Gilmour on board as a consultant to provide us with a fresh, objective analysis of our performance. When you race in-house as regularly as we do, it is vital to measure yourself against outside competitors and as there is just a fleet race left before the Match, we won't have this opportunity. Therefore we are seeking an objective point of view and bringing in an outsider of Peter's calibre will hopefully bring some new ideas and a critical analysis of our match race skills."
Big-name consultants are all the rage right now, with the Spanish team Desafio Espanol having signed up Paul Cayard as a technical consultant, with the specific remit of helping prepare and tune-up the team's new boat ESP-97. However, whereas it would be a big shock to see Peter Gilmour take a racing role in Alinghi, it wouldn't be that surprising if Cayard's remit were to be extended into taking an afterguard role in the Louis Vuitton Cup.
Cayard has certainly been a busy boy of late, what with the announcement between him and his business partner Russell Coutts of a new global sailing event to be known as the World Sailing League. This announcement has been a long time coming, with rumours circulating for the past two years about what Messieurs C&C might have in store. Ever since Alinghi dispensed with Coutts's services, he has been trying his hand at all manner of different types of sailing: Dragon keelboat racing, 35-foot lake racing catamarans in Switzerland, 60-foot trimaran sailing, and getting his own specialist match-racing keelboat up and running, the RC44 (RC being his initials).
So too Cayard has a varied CV these past few years, competing at the last Olympics in the Star keelboat, captaining the Pirates of the Caribbean in the last Volvo Ocean Race and guesting aboard canting-keeled SuperMaxis such as the Kiwi 100-footer Maximus. Part of the reason for pursuing such varied interests was for Coutts and Cayard to research what they felt was the most appropriate vessel for their World Sailing League series.
All was eventually revealed at a press conference in Lisbon at the beginning of February. Coutts and Cayard have teamed up with Portuguese sports promoter João Lagos, a former professional tennis player who represented his country in the Davis Cup, and the trio's plan is for a travelling circuit of fleet races contested in one-design 70-foot catamarans, with $2 million in prize money going to the series champion. The WSL has commissioned French multihull designers Mark van Peteghem and Vincent Lauriot Prévost to draw the lines for these new boats, of which 14 are to be built, with 12 teams invited to compete. Coutts and Cayard have said they will each enter a boat. The fleet of cats is scheduled to be built next year, with the first event set to take place the following year, 2009.
So does this new series present a threat to the pre-eminence of the America's Cup as the most important event on the sailing calendar? Difficult to say, as it's all about what measures you place upon such things. If it's in terms of prestige, history, heritage, then the America's Cup wins hands down, and will continue to do so. But if it's bang for buck, return on investment for the sponsors, that is a more interesting battle. Clearly America's Cup Management have elevated the Cup to a higher commercial plane than it has ever enjoyed before in its century-and-a-half history, but in terms of appeal to television and spectators it is fighting an uphill battle in a number of areas. The boats are slow, and four out of five match races are one-sided affairs with very little in the way of competitive action. It can be hard work making the America's Cup look sexy enough for TV.
The World Sailing League has the advantage of starting with a blank sheet, and clearly Coutts, Cayard and Lagos are focused on wooing television viewers with their 70-foot high-performance catamarans. They've opted for fleet racing too, where even if there is a runaway winner of a race you can still find some action in the middle of the fleet. It will be interesting to see how the WSL prospers, and what effect it has on the America's Cup. I suspect the world is a begin enough place for both events to co-exist happily, without unduly affecting each other. The most important thing is for the two events to coordinate their calendars, because it would be a shame for both events if there were to be a clash of dates where the world's best sailors were forced to choose between one regatta or the other.
