One World Diary

Mark Chisnell on the International Regatta and the OneWorld perspective on 'Aucklandgate'

The bottom line is that all this is going to provide some much needed formal clarification on this area of the Protocol, which will benefit everyone involved in the Cup. There are plenty of grey areas. For instance it seems widely accepted that a practical interpretation of the rules is that you can take away from your previous campaign what's in your head, but nothing on disk or paper. But what about old papers and photos in dusty office corners - these carry information that's superseded by what you hold in your head, but they still have a physical existence contrary to the letter of the rules.

But the best thing that could come out of this affair is that it stirs up some momentum to sort out a new Protocol ahead of the 2003 event - rather than leaving the winners to write it in a hurry when it's all over.

The America's Cup community needs to get together and frame a set of rules that are not just better written and more workable, but also take the opportunity to shape the competition to go forward. We should be asking the big questions, like do we actually want to limit the transfer of design information between teams from one Cup to the next? These rules weren't in place fifteen years ago, and Oracle have already made the point that they were limited in their ability to respond to their first keel falling off, because the Protocol disallowed them access to the required engineering information.

The current rules benefit those teams that can hold together a campaign from one Cup to the next. They significantly limit the ability for new players to buy a running start - and for those leaving the game to optimise the value of the assets that they have built up. Syndicates that are closing down cannot sell the information they've built up to other teams, and get back some of the hard cash that they've spent. Is this likely to allow the Cup to grow?

But I digress, back to the issue at hand. The first great irony in all this is that Sean Reeves is Team NZ's former rules advisor and one of the main authors of the Protocol. And he was hired by OneWorld as the man to ensure that the team didn't contravene the complex Cup rules. Gary Wright will tell you that if they made any mistakes in the early days, this was probably the biggest.

The second irony is that the team's mission statement - posted front and centre in the team manual that we were all given on joining up - was framed around Craig McCaw's belief that the Cup could be won by the nice guys, behaving honourably, respectfully and modestly, and maybe bringing a little attention to some of the big environmental issues facing the planet along the way. It was a mission statement and an attitude that attracted a lot of people to the team.

Well, we tried, and we still got caught up in a pissing contest. What's left is for us to fight to preserve the integrity of the team and all its members, and to minimise the damage done to the reputation of this fine sport and the America's Cup. There's no doubt that we're all upset that this has happened, but you know what they say: if it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger.