The prodigal son

Ed Gorman spoke to Alinghi skipper Russell Coutts about favouritism, building a team from scratch and his return to Auckland

madfor sailing : Russell, a lot people have got Alinghi down as favourites.

Russell Coutts: Have they?

mfs: Yes, they seem to...

RC: It's flattering but I wouldn't necessarily say it's justified right now.

mfs: People also think the challenger is going to win this time around. That means a lot of people are backing you guys to go the whole way. What do you think about that?

RC: Well I hope they're right, but it's a little presumptious. We are a new team and we're trying to do things well so outwardly, perhaps, we have the image of being professional and that's certainly what we're trying to do. I'm very, very happy with what we've done so far but there are a lot of other good teams and I actually think this will be the most competitive Cup yet.

It's so difficult to judge who the favourite is right now - all that you really have to go on is how much funding each team has, how much full-sized sailing they have done on the water and what kind of people they have on the programme. You don't have any real idea of what the technology developments are which has always been a critical part of this event. So I'm certainly conservative when I'm rating the opposition. I usually rate them high and I expect them to be very, very good and that's the case here. The reality is that most of the teams - with a fair bit of justification - have a fair chance of winning.

mfs: If there is an overall question mark about how far Alinghi can go, it could be that even if you have all the money you need and all the right people, bringing it all together and making it happen from nothing is still a big ask. Do you feel, now you are well into this, that it's still something you have to magic together and that it can be done from scratch so to speak?

RC: You're absolutely right. When you look at what you have to do with a new team, you have to establish all the infrastructure, establish the business, establish the brand, assemble all the people and get all those people to work as a cohesive unit. All the time you are learning a lot about your people.

We tried in the early stages to set it up so that we didn't put people into roles that were too defined too early. In that way we allowed the group to grow and it was only recently that we started to focus those roles a little bit deeper. So all this takes time and, as you say, this is the one area where the existing teams have a little bit of an advantage.

On the other hand I think we can use our situation to our advantage too in that, all of a sudden, you have a lot of new people coming together and if you can somehow get those people to contribute to the best of their abilities and generate new ideas and be creative, then you can make big steps forward.

mfs: You have had the experience of leading a very patriotic syndicate with Team New Zealand. Is it harder for you to get the same cohesiveness when it's a multinational operation?

RC: We are a different team so you can't approach it the same way. The first thing to recognise was that, what worked with some of the previous teams I was involved with, perhaps wouldn't work with this team. So we've had to learn about our people and then develop structures that will hopefully work for this group.

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