Changes to the challanger seriers

[Guest]

As Rod pointed out a while ago, theres only going to be three challengers for the cup and things are going to have to change because of it. Heres what EMTNZ put out on facebook via the herald today.

 

The underwhelming number of entries for the 34th America's Cup has forced organisers to re-think the format of next year's regatta.

 

Just three challengers - Emirates Team New Zealand, Luna Rossa and Artemis - have paid the US$100,000 ($121,000) entry fee for the 2013 event. With those teams already well-advanced in the design and build process of their AC72s, America's Cup regatta director Iain Murray admits it is looking increasingly unlikely that another syndicate will enter at this late stage.

 

"We're hopeful of having more teams outside of the teams that are already building, but the reality is the runway is going to run out in the not too distant future as to when they can start building and get to the startline, so it is going to become clear pretty quickly as to who the Louis Vuitton Cup competitors are going to be," said Murray, who was in Auckland yesterday for a competitor's forum.

 

The number of entries are well down on what organisers had been predicting, with the proposed format of the Louis Vuitton challenger series allowing for eight challengers and scheduled to run for two months from July 4-September 1 next year.

 

 

But with only three competitors, the regatta is likely to be scaled back significantly.

 

"It's going to change what's on the table for sure," said Murray when asked if the length of the Louis Vuitton series will be reduced.

 

"In the next few weeks we'll start planning on a bunch of potential different formats as to what the Louis Vuitton Cup will look like. We'll have to look at the mixture of the type of racing we do and how many races we do on each day and the breaks that we give the teams."

 

Murray said he was aware of the importance of maintaining the history and heritage of the America's Cup.

 

One of the options discussed yesterday was making each of the matches a best-of-three series rather than just a one-off match race.

 

This format could also be introduced for the America's Cup World Series regattas this year.

 

But it is still not apparent how that would fit into an eight-week Louis Vuitton series, much to the frustration of the competing teams who are keen for clarity around this.

 

Murray said a number of different agendas were emerging in the competitors' group, with some focused on AC45 issues, with the other four teams more interested in the AC72s.

 

For the AC72 group their main concerns yesterday were getting the length of course sorted, the format of the racing and the way the racing would be scored.

 

"What we're seeing is a number of different agendas emerging and as we go forward we have a number of different subjects we need to deal with," said Murray.

 

"The teams that are well-organised and strong are digging deeper into the detail of what we're going to do."

[Guest]

And this is the reason why there are only three teams so far in the challenger series . A great article from soundings that I stole.

 

The Auld Mug in China? What once might have sounded like blasphemy is becoming a distinct possibility. Yes, for the first 132 years the America’s Cup was the Americans’ cup, but since Dennis Conner lost it to the Australians in 1983 the ewer has gone cosmo. New Zealand and Switzerland won it twice, keeping it out of the United States for 15 years before software tycoon Larry Ellison won it back last year with a gigantic trimaran.

 

Ironically, Ellison’s point man was Russell Coutts, who won it for New Zealand in 1995 in San Diego (crushing Conner 5-0) and defected from the Kiwis to win it for the Swiss in 2003. Now that it’s their game, Ellison and Coutts are turning it upside down and inside out so that the Cup becomes more digestible for the masses, who know little or nothing about sailboat racing.

In a volatile economy, this might be a tough sell in most places. But it’s less so in China, which still enjoys robust economic growth. If the Chinese ought to buy boats instead of merely building them, they’ll need to be entertained to be enticed. At the very least, they’ll buy what the sponsors have to sell.

 

Changing the game

Much of getting the Cup to China has to do with the America’s Cup World Series, a new sailing circuit that uses the AC45, an exciting 45-foot catamaran with a wing in place of a conventional mainsail. Races are staged in popular sailing venues to drum up excitement for the next America’s Cup, which will be staged in San Francisco in September 2013.

 

To be eligible for a Cup challenge, syndicates must participate in the World Series. After two stops in Europe last summer, the series came to San Diego — the last U.S. venue where the America’s Cup was sailed, in 1995. I had a chance to hang with China Team, which is one of several small syndicates that are struggling to keep up with the big guns, such as Ellison’s Oracle Racing; Artemis, from Sweden (the challenger of record); and the perennially strong Team New Zealand.

 

Though China Team is near the bottom of the totem pole, nobody laughs. First, there’s talent on the squad: Skipper Charlie Ogletree, who won an Olympic silver medal for the United States in the Tornado in 2004, assembled a crew of gifted sailors from Australia, Austria, France and the Netherlands and a couple of Kiwi match racers to do China’s bidding.

 

Second, taking the World Series to China is a no-brainer. It’s a brand-new game, well produced, tightly controlled, lavishly hyped and painfully expensive, and it desperately needs to find new audiences. Third, it’s made for television and YouTube, which will carry it to new demographics and places. The boats fly a hull in the tiniest whisper of a breeze, and above 25 knots it’s a fight for survival, with pitchpoles and cartwheels thrown in. The on-board cameras bear witness to sailing as a highly athletic endeavor. “The top of the sport has to be removed from the rest,” muses Tim Jeffrey, a former newspaper correspondent who now is Oracle’s PR captain. “If anybody could do it, nobody would watch.”

 

To make people watch, the races are close to shore and last a maximum of 40 minutes. There are fleet races, match races and speed trials, the nautical equivalent of downhill ski racing. There’s a 500-meter speed strip in front of the grandstands — each team against the clock, two tries, fastest time wins. But the unique selling point of the World Series is the sophisticated broadcast with “augmented reality” that provides the kind of footage that couch potatoes have come to expect from the National Football League and NASCAR.

 

It happens courtesy of Stan Honey, one of the world’s best navigators and a tech wizard who conceived, among other things, the virtual first-down line on TV for football games. Dozens of cameras on land, on water and in the air capture the boats from every angle while they are being tracked to within an inch by GPS. The live images are supplemented by graphics that show positions, speeds, distances, marks and virtual course boundaries so non-sailors can understand what’s happening. It’s called LiveLine, and it also enables real-time umpiring and real-time race course management.

Forget protest hearings, anchors and buoys. Time is money here. Rod Davis, a Cup hero and coach with Team New Zealand, calls the World Series a show for sponsors, television and the general public. It’s not just a sailing regatta; it’s also a sports property designed to turn a buck. To do that, it needs new markets, and the elephant of new markets is China, which has 1.3 billion people, many of whom have discretional renminbis to spend.

 

Chinese funding, but few sailors

As a former investment banker with Chase, Standard & Poor’s, Morgan Stanley and the China Development Bank, Wang Chaoyong is one of China’s high rollers. In 2007, he headed the first Chinese America’s Cup challenge, and these days, as chief executive of a venture capital firm, he underwrote the early stages of China Team’s World Series presence. That was enough to get the team there, but it needs additional financing to get over the hump.

 

At the same time it seeks to establish its authenticity. And that’s the rub: “To be considered a Chinese team by the Chinese, we need Chinese sailors,” explains chief executive Thierry Barot, a French veteran of many Cup campaigns. However, sailing has yet to build a meaningful following in China and the sport lacks domestic talent that is capable of racing an AC45 at the highest level.

Hence, Barot recruits foreign talent and crossover athletes such as the towering Ma Jian, who once was the shooting guard on China’s basketball team. He played in the 1992 Olympics, and one year later he became the first Chinese to play college hoops in the United States, alongside Keith Van Horn at the University of Utah. In 1995, he was drafted by the Los Angeles Clippers but went on to play pro ball in the Philippines and China.

 

At age 42, Ma still is strong and athletic, but his 6-foot-7 frame is a detriment on a bucking boat that’s hurtling along at 25 knots or more. “The difficult part for me, on the boat you don’t jump and there’s no physical contact, but you need to keep your balance,” says Ma. “Plus, you need to pay attention to what’s happening on the boat and on the water.” It’s a tall order for a rookie, but Ma is confident China Team can make it. “We put on the Olympics. We put on the China Cup Regatta. We are in the Volvo Ocean Race. Why not also in the next Cup? China should do it all.”

 

Right now it’s all about money. “Given the economic circumstances in Europe and the U.S., I think raising money in China is a better bet right now,” says Andy Hagara, an Austrian Tornado world and European champion who succeeded the Australian Mitch Booth at the helm after the first World Series in Portugal. Despite a win in a tune-up race in San Diego and a couple of solid races during the World Series, Hagara says the team desperately needs more practice together and a stronger development program for the headsails on the AC45.

 

After all, Hagara says, small outfits such as Team Korea, Aleph and Energy Team are not flush with cash but had strong showings in San Diego because they practiced on 40-foot catamarans in the more competitive but less costly Extreme Sailing Series. Getting paid, Hagara adds, wouldn’t be a bad idea, either. “So far, we’ve been doing this without contracts because we believe in the possibilities.”

Adds skipper Ogletree: “We’ve got a long list of things to work on, but mainly it’s one job: fundraising.”

Clock is ticking faster

 

During the World Series’ winter hiatus, the Chinese have two races on their hands. One, of course, is the dash for cash. “We have Chinese companies funding us at the moment, but we are still looking for the title sponsor to be better prepared for all the races,” PR manager Noelle Gahan-Smulders says. But time is ticking because the fully funded teams have been working feverishly on design and construction of the bigger, badder, faster and much costlier AC72 catamarans that will be used in the Cup.

In San Diego, Cup insiders talked openly about only three credible challengers in 2013: Artemis, Team New Zealand and Luna Rossa, the Italian syndicate of fashion billionaires Miuccia Prada Bianchi and Patrizio Bertelli that will join the World Series in 2012. China Team’s blog revealed that technical director Yann Dabadie and China Team’s owner reviewed and decided to purchase the $1.2 million shared design package from America’s Cup Race Management that is meant to help fast-track the development and construction of an AC72 cat.

 

China Team’s second race is to secure a World Series event at home. The team says there is interest from a couple of cities and that it is “working closely with the America’s Cup Event Authority to make this happen.” If it comes to pass, it would bring the Cup to the Chinese (it travels with the World Series) and the Chinese to the Cup. It also would boost China Team to make it China’s team, which would stir interest, attract sponsors and get youngsters to choose sailing over other sports. It’s a win-win because sailing finally would grow again and China eventually could become a legitimate contender for the Auld Mug.

 

Dieter Loibner is sailing editor for Soundings.

This article originally appeared in the February 2012 issue of Soundings.