‘Bonjour, Brest!’ After 49d 3h alone at sea Thomas Coville steps on stage to greet his adoring fans who had turned out in their thousands on a chilly Boxing Day to welcome home the fastest singlehanded sailor around the planet – and by some margin. Not long afterwards Armel Le Cléac’h would arrive in Les Sables to close out his Vendée Globe win, followed by Francis Joyon taking the Jules Verne Trophy on Idec. For thousands of French fans keen to greet their sailing heroes it was hard to keep up…
financial muscle of Oracle boss Larry Ellison, and that of his Japanese, British and Swedish challengers, it would take strong nerves and deep pockets to mount a legal challenge. And, assuming one of the five signatories wins the Cup and selects another signatory as Challenger of Record, the framework is likely to hold. As one legal expert on the Deed explained: ‘Certainly, if a valid challenge is in place and there is mutual consent between trustee and challenger, there is little another competitor or past trustee can do about their agreed terms, nor is it likely a New York court would intervene, short of illegality.’
The main motivation behind the framework appears to be to establish stability and continuity, with the Cup cycle reduced to a Match every two years. It promises a known pathway forward allowing teams and sponsors to plan longterm programmes, without the inconvenience of a new defender changing the direction or format. That is doubtless attractive to the professional sailors, and to the mostly private plus more modest commercial interests currently involved. But on the other side of the ledger it comes at a cost. For a start, with a prestige event like the America’s Cup is there any certainty that holding it every two years adds to its lustre? Would the Olympic Games be held in higher regard by doubling its frequency, or the various soccer, rugby and cricket World Cups? Or does the very fact that these events present only sparing oppor- tunities to compete make them more, not less, compelling? At face value the framework surely reduces the victor’s bounty; if he honours the agreement he holds aloft a trophy stripped of much of the mystique, idiosyncracy and tradition that have enthralled fans for nearly two centuries and simply inherits a design, a format and a timetable already in place. At its essence the winner of the Cup assumes the ‘glamour’ of becoming another regatta organiser. On a practical level the new framework even appears to work against the victor’s right to select the Cup venue. Setting up all the infrastructure, funding and organisational elements of hosting an America’s Cup regatta in a new location within the two-year cycle will be a major obstacle. It has certainly not been achieved by any host city to date, suggesting that it is likely to have to remain in Bermuda for the foreseeable future, or go out to ‘what-if’ bids sufficiently far in advance for preparations to be made well ahead of the next Cup cycle. Hard to imagine that.
Home waters would be out of the equation, because the future venue would be set in place before the current Match outcome was known. Of course, the fact that the 2017 regatta is situated on a small island in the mid-Atlantic already ignores the longstanding tradition of holding the defence in home waters. By virtue of its landlocked nature, the Swiss Alinghi team was
the first defender to depart from this practice. A US defender has no such geographic impediment and moving away from the home waters tradition is all the more curious after the outstanding event in San Francisco in 2013. This plays into the erosion of another central tenet of the Cup, namely that it is a contest of nations. In supporting the new framework, Larry Ellison said it would now enable players to plan ahead and ‘come out and compete for their country’. Yet, despite frequent calls for stronger nationality requirements, the recent trend has gone the other way. Only one crew out of five in the AC45s and one out of six on the AC class must hold the pass- port, or have been born in the country represented. Although Team USA represents the nation with the longest tenure as Cup guardian, it is continually criticised by American fans and sailors for its scant employment of homegrown talent. In similar vein, country of origin requirements for the boats and equipment have all but disappeared. These are by no means the only ironies exposed in the upbeat language of the new framework announcement. It goes on to quote Mr Ellison: ‘People who want to enter this race now know how much it will cost, what kind of boat they need to build and that the rules
can’t change on them.’ Given the experience of the current Cup cycle, it is questionable how much confidence there can be that the ‘rules can’t change on them’. Certainly, Mr Bertelli could provide a lively narrative on that point.
The racing format further dispenses with another tradition by allowing the defender to engage in one-on-one match racing during the challenger elimination series. While the Defender has sailed in fleet formats during the modern era, once the game switched to match racing it was challengers only – until the Match itself. That separation reserved all the suspense for the much anticipated theatrical moment of truth when the two protagonists entered the battleground for the first time.
The announcement claims the new framework agreement ‘will encourage more teams to be involved and ultimately create larger audiences…’ No team has ever claimed to place a higher priority on growing the America’s Cup than Oracle, yet participation in its events has been marked by very low challenger numbers: just three in 2013 and five in 2017, the lowest participation in nearly 40 years. Since the establishment of the Louis Vuitton Cup the challenger fleets were: 1983 – 7; 1987 – 13; 1992 – 8; 1995 – 7; 2000 – 11; 2003 – 9; 2007 – 11.
Luca Devoti, former skipper of the 2007 Italian +39 syndicate, sees little prospect of the new framework promoting greater participation. ‘The fact that no new team will have a real chance will end up killing even more of what is left of the glorious America’s Cup,’ he predicted.
Could it be that, in the name of progress, the reformist zeal that has seen the steady erosion of the Cup’s history and traditions is harming rather than helping the pursuit of growth? To date the losses appear to outweigh the gains. Ivor Wilkins
FRANCE Turnover
The Vendée Globe-winning Imoca 60 Banque Populaire VIII had been sold before the start of the race to Bureau Vallée, sponsor of Louis Burton who finished seventh on his old Farr design of the same name. And in early January German skipper Boris Hermann confirmed the acquisition of Edmond De Rothschildwith support from the Monaco Yacht Club. Jean-Pierre Dick will race the Transat Jacques Vabre on the existing St-Michel Virbac (fifth in Les Sables) and by July we will have an announcement confirming that she too is either for sale or already sold. Alex Thomson will also race the Transat Jacques Vabre; he is said to be talking about building a new boat with the sale of the existing Hugo Boss. Meanwhile, at the end of June Safran will end the sponsorship contract between themselves and skipper Morgan Lagravière, along with Kairos, the company owned by Roland Jourdain which ran the Imoca programme. Then the boat will be for sale – both Morgan and ‘Bilou’ are now working hard to keep her in their team. No Way Back, the sixth and last new VPLP/Verdier-generation foiler, was still sailing up the Atlantic in mid-February but skipper Pieter Heerema has made no decision about what he wants to do with his boat later on.
The older boats of the Vendée Globe also have plenty of buyer interest. Tanguy de Lamotte (Initiatives Coeur) signed an agreement for the purchase of Maître Coq, the 2012-generation VPLP/Verdier that was retro-fitted with foils, finishing third in the Vendée. Two generations old and first of the VPLP/Verdier designs, Quéguiner- Leucémie Espoir(ex-Safran) finished fifth at Les Sables as the first ‘non-foiler’ and is under option to be purchased by Alain Gautier’s company Lanic Sport who intend to add an Imoca to their charter operation Sensation Océan.
The best conventional boats such as PRBand SMAare not for
sale yet. One of the big questions is to know, in the coming months, how the Imoca rule is going to be modified. The official intention is to be very cautious and not to make obsolete the existing foilers, but for sure all the new boats in the future will have foils.
The (new) Sodebo
Having barely stepped ashore from his super-fast 49-day solo round-the-world trip, Thomas Coville has a new project: to build a
SEAHORSE 13
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