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to host the 2007 regatta. Valencia eventually got the nod, but excellent AC preliminary regattas were held at Naples in 2012 and 2013 during the lead-up to the San Francisco Cup. According to the Alinghi statement, ETNZ had no right to announce the venue without first having agreed a protocol with the Challenger of Record. ‘In signing a commercial deal with a host city that includes the Challenger Selection Series of races for the Louis Vuitton Cup, Team New Zealand have sold something they do not own the rights to. This is not acceptable…’


A succession of terse ripostes from ETNZ quickly followed, assert- ing that the complaints were ‘unreasonable’ and pointing out that:  Before the Naples announcement ETNZ provided the latest draft version of the Protocol to the Challenger of Record and 10 days later had received no substantive response.  In the interests of transparency, all prospective challengers had been offered full access to the Host Venue Agreement signed with Naples. They only had to follow standard commercial practice and sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement.  As of 23 May, 10 days after the venue announcement, the Defender had yet to receive a signed NDA from the (current) Challenger of Record.  The Memorandum of Understanding signed with the CoR at the conclusion of the 37th America’s Cup in Barcelona endorsed ‘the right and obligation’ of the Defender to choose the venue for the next regatta.  Furthermore, the MOU agreed ‘the Venue for the Match and for the preceding CSS (Challenger Selection Series – author emphasis) will be determined and announced by the AC38 Defender within eight months of the AC37 Final Race’. Alinghi’s prominent participation in what one media report termed the ‘Gang of Three’ is interesting. In late April Alinghi Red Bull Racing issued a statement lamenting that ‘we have not been able to find agreement with the Defender for the future of the event’, again citing a desire for ‘more accountability, greater transparency and new opportunities to perform… as a group’.


The statement added that ‘It is with great disappointment that we have begun an orderly wind-down of the Alinghi Red Bull team.’ That was widely reported as the Swiss team withdrawing from the America’s Cup. However, it was a smokescreen. Following a dis- appointing performance in Barcelona, Alinghi was in fact winding down because Red Bull had decided to withdraw its sponsorship. So, while it was accurate that Alinghi Red Bull Racing would not be participating in 2027, there was nothing to say Alinghi would not continue under another name. As ETNZ boss Grant Dalton noted publicly on a couple of occasions, ‘They are still recruiting…’ Indeed, recruitment may well have been one of the areas on which Alinghi were not able to find agreement with ETNZ. From the outset of his Cup quest Bertarelli has been keen on an open market for recruiting top talent wherever it hails from. He is strongly opposed to nationality restrictions. His own 2003 Cup debut was structured around Russell Coutts and a key group of Team New Zealand sailors lured away during an interim period when they were not bound by any team contracts, or nationality restrictions. Under the open-slather terms of Alinghi’s protocol for the 2007 Cup defence in Valencia, Bertarelli was the only Swiss national in his multi-national crew. When he talks about the Cup’s ruling Deed of Gift being out of date, one of the provisions he is aiming at is the ‘friendly competition between foreign countries’ clause. In con- trast, ETNZ boss Dalton is well aware of how the Bertarelli ‘raid’ devastated New Zealand’s Cup prospects. As a Defender Dalton has always ensured strict nationality measures apply to safeguard the Kiwi talent pool from what he terms the ‘circling sharks’. Ironically, the draft protocol, which ETNZ made public as a pointed demonstration of transparency, does contain concessions on nation- ality. It allows for two non-nationals in the sailing teams – as long as they did not participate for any other team in last year’s Barcelona regatta. That restriction means ETNZ’s triple Cup winning skipper, Peter Burling, who parted company with the team earlier this year, will, in theory, not have a sailing role on any other team in 2027. It might better be called the ‘Burling Clause’.


Which calls to mind a similar situation when Bertarelli and Coutts had an acrimonious divorce not long before the 2007 regatta. 


SEAHORSE 29


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