Update
Yeah, right: ‘I’ll come for free,’ Jimmy Spithill (above) said when he contacted his old Cup team, Luna Rossa, after his last employer, Oracle Team USA, shut the doors. After 10 spectacularly well-rewarded years with Larry Ellison there’s no doubt Spithill is not short of cash to put food on the table, but he would like to win back the Cup after the humbling his team took in Bermuda. His re-signing is a big vote of confidence in the latest Italian challenge – though with few teams yet committed to AC36 the options looked pretty limited
they make commitments. With the rule out now more people are getting interested. [Ernesto] Bertarelli called us, he is showing some interest. He is
not sure about the design. But it is in 2021, it is not tomorrow. There is still a lot of time to go. Also, it’s been a long winter in Europe – they have been sleeping for a while! SH: But I don’t think you have been sleeping, have you… Jimmy Spithill was not re-signed to Luna Rossa by accident. PB: You know that James started with us before he went to Oracle. We have stayed on very good terms so when it seemed that Oracle had stopped we thought about getting in touch again but we didn’t want to press him. Actually, what happened is that he called us, and, of course, there were two major things that we needed to agree on which were his mentality, so to speak, his feelings about doing this again, and also his compensation. Because of course when he was at Oracle he made impressive amounts of money. We asked him, ‘And what is your spirit? How do you feel about
it?’ He was very open and frank with us and half-jokingly he said, ‘I would come for free.’ When he joined Oracle he also committed to a very specific use of his ‘image’ in terms of communications and sponsors. At Luna Rossa he will be much freer. It feels a bit like he would like to go back 10 years. At the same time he never really talked to me personally – I left Max [Sirena] to discuss every- thing with him. Now he has signed and I think it will be good. For us it has always been easy with Jimmy even when he was
at Oracle. If you have a good relationship with people, of course you are rivals but you are rivals on the sporting side, it is not personal. Which is something I regret as far as Russell [Coutts] is concerned. His attitude is always a bit heavy. He is more difficult to relate to. Maybe because he is very money-minded. Of course that kind of attitude towards money gives Russell a lot of personal freedom, but for other people it is as important to be both personal friends and sporting opponents at the same time. Russell’s dedication to money has a big impact on his behaviour. Then, of course, as soon as he gets on a boat it is the same old Russell! Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde. SH: Well, you got that one out of the way. Any other major signings you are thinking of? PB: We want to bring on as many young people as we can. The
14 SEAHORSE
TP52 is so important for team building, having people stick together as well as race together. It is now the only top-quality professional circuit out there. Everybody is there and it is also highly technical. It is the best gym for training in contemporary sailing, for racing. If you are thinking of the Imoca and the round-the-world races it is a different kind of gym. Think about it, it is always a question of budget. There is no such
thing as a cheap America’s Cup. An America’s Cup is at least 60-80 million euros. But it does not make sense to think of a cheap America’s Cup. It is never going to be the sailors’ America’s Cup, the sailing team’s America’s Cup. SH: Really, it is still a regatta for owners… PB: We don’t need funders as such, but that is only one thing. It is a very complicated event, the America’s Cup. It is all of those people together who make an America’s Cup. Pretending it is a kind of democratic event and it is accessible to almost anyone is just odd, it is not possible. It is not what the Cup is all about. You can’t do without any single component. It does not work
that way. There are people who may give all of their time and there are people there just part of the time, there are designers who might chip in for part of the project, whatever, but everybody is involved. Also, that is something else we want to bring back to the Cup. We want to be a bit more open, we don’t want to be too strict about keeping people out, keeping everything secret. That has been bad for the Cup these last few times. We want the whole team spirit to be easier, more easy-going, as it used to be. We want to be lighter. Personally I am obviously working especially hard with my
business and what is developing in Europe at the moment, but when I come to my team I want to be a bit less intense. Very competitive of course, just less intense. SH: As Challenger of Record there is pressure to have good management for all the shore activities, so you’ll need someone like Bruno Troublé perhaps… PB:Actually, Laurent Esquier has this part of the project well under control at present for us, but Bruno is certainly someone with a very high profile and we may well talk to him as well. We set up two separate companies, actually. One is the Challenger of Record company (COR) which we want to be totally w
INGRID ABERY
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