As the 22 October date for a court hearing in the New York Supreme Court drew ever closer, the verbal tit for tat battle over the future of the America's Cup stepped up a gear. While there have been reports of the disgruntled billionaires Ernesto Bertarelli and Larry Ellison trying to sort things out over the phone, there has been little sign of progress in public...
A few days after Justice Cahn sat down in the New York Supreme Court to hear both sides of the dispute over the 33rd America’s Cup, Alinghi made the unexpected move of publishing details of the new 90-foot rule which will shape the boats for the future...
One day we might look back on this era of the America's Cup with fond amusement. The moments in a century and a half of competition where the lawyers have had a bigger say in the event's outcome than the sailors, all add to the Cup's rich history. But going through these periods as they're actually happening is nothing but painful...
Will we ever see a better America’s Cup in our lifetime than the 32nd edition? Highly unlikely. Although it didn’t go down to the wire like Australia II’s historical 4-3 comeback against Liberty in 1983 – the match which changed the Cup forever – the racing in the 32nd edition was far more compelling.
One of the intentions of the Version 5 rule changes to the America's Cup Class was to make the boats more similar in speed, and also to make it easier for the trailing boat to overtake downwind. The ultimate intention was to make the racing much closer and less predictable. While Version 5 has indeed made the yachts much closer in performance, strangely this hasn't succeeded in producing any closely-fought series during the knock-out phases of the Louis Vuitton Cup...
If Chris Dickson never wins the America's Cup, it will be because he wanted it too much. Elite athletes and sports psychologists talk about ‘optimum level of arousal' - getting excited enough to get the adrenalin flowing, not getting so excited that the adrenalin floods the system and you lose mental and physical control. Despite the presence of a full-time psychologist at the BMW Oracle base in Valencia, Dickson has not yet learned to achieve that optimum level of arousal...
At the end of February the Auld Mug, the America’s Cup trophy left Geneva, its temporary home for the past four years, on the ‘Road to Valencia’. This was a procession through five major European cities, which during March took the Cup to Paris, Rome, Berlin and Madrid, before reaching Port America’s Cup in Valencia.
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...
The British have been trying to win the America's Cup longer than any other nation. After all, it was a race around the Isle of Wight in 1851 that started it all, when the only foreign yacht, America, defeated 14 local boats in their own backyard...