Dee Smith on the Admiral's Cup

In 1983 there were 13 teams competing. In 1985, 45 boats did the US Admiral's Cup trials. Since then, the fleet has decreased but the competition got much better. The change from IOR to IMS was necessary because there were no new IOR boats being built. The RORC tried, to the best of their ability, to pick boats that would be around. In my opinion this is where the mistakes started.

The new IMS boats were being campaigned by the same owners and much the same teams as the old IOR boats. And in Europe the Admiral's Cup was still the king of regattas. The ORC ignored wishes from the owners and professionals to freeze the IMS rule to let the designs evolve into type-form boats. The ORC elected to keep changing the VPP every year (and still does). For the ILC classes, this meant the owners had to pay a ridiculous amount of money every year to keep their boat competitive with a new boat. These changes never made the boat faster. The RORC decided to end the lives of the ILC 40 and 46 in regards to the Admiral's Cup.This killed both classes. Because of the ORC, the RORC decided to make their own rule and announced the IRC and IRM as the new international class.

The thought process was right, but the politics were not. The RORC went on their mission to kill the IMS. The owners, mostly in Europe, were having a good time since 1997 racing IMS in other events and the IMS 50' class started. We would see over 100 IMS boats racing for the Copa Del Rey. The owners see the RORC as trying to kill another IMS class and over the last couple of years stopped supporting the RORC's races. Now there is England and France doing a lot of IRC and a little IRM and northern Europe and the Med doing only IMS.

The RORC made the classic mistake of biting the hand that feeds them. It is these owners that make these regattas happen, not the event. Philippe Kahn's comments was right on the mark. It takes a lots of time and money to organize a winning Admiral's Cup team. You need a least two or three owners that have the money and want to do the regatta.

I've helped to put the last two winning teams together. With each of those teams we had commitments from their owners by September the year before. In 1997, I had to find two great guys - Tom Roach from Ireland and Roman Paske from Poland - to field two-thirds of the USA team. Coming from Europe, they wanted to do the regatta and were very happy to join the team. Finding US owners to do the Cup has always been hard. The same happened with the Dutch when Peter DeRidder and Hans Eekhof made the commitment to do the regatta together.

After the last Admiral's Cup, there were meetings between the RORC and some of the IMS owners. The RORC led the owners to believe that the IMS 50 would still be in the Admiral's Cup. Yet after a while they changed their mind and decided on the Corel. It was a political choice. I don't think there have been any Corel's built since 1997. It was the RORC that couldn't have a IMS class sailing in their event. This is the time when teams started to pull out. The Dutch, Germans and Europeans (Brava's Team) pulled out on the announcement. These were all long time competing teams.

Without these three teams, it is very hard to find other owners that want to spend that kind of money for not too much competition. In Europe this year the best races will be the Tour de France, Copa Del Rey and the IMS worlds. It is much easier to get an owner excited about these events than the Admiral's Cup at this time. At least there are palm trees and good food.

One more thing: the best suggestion to bring back the stature of the Admiral's Cup was made by the Dutch team after winning the last time: let the Cup travel to the winning team's country. This will bring in teams from everywhere and will help sponsorship.