Paul Cayard - Part 1

In Rio Andy Rice discovered the round the world and America's Cup guru has a strong view on almost everything sailing related

Cayard would like to see a vastly simplified world of professional sailing. "We've got singlehanded around the world, double-handed around the world, crewed around the world, America's Cup, and we've got some sort of circuit of match racing that feeds the America's Cup. We need a storyline here. We need a product line. Let's take match racing - we've got a huge superbowl event called the America's Cup and we've got an annual circuit like a Formula One kind of thing.

"Then we've got ocean racing, it doesn't mean racing for 180 miles from Gothenburg to Kiel [a swipe, perhaps, at the final sprint leg of the Volvo Ocean Race?], it means two formats. We've got the three-stopper and the no-stopper. We've got the crewed and the uncrewed. That's our product line. We are unified. We have Alinghi Challenge, OneWorld Challenge, Nautor Challenge. We take all the teams in the Volvo and the America’s Cup, and others like Kingfisher - all of a sudden we've got, say, 25 teams and we make it palatable that at least 18 of those will get involved in all of the events in the programme.

"This way, we've got a schedule of events, and if we all do them we give value to our sponsors. We've just got to build a product line that is of interest to the public. Right now it's all fragmented and it doesn't work."

So perhaps the illbruck-style, twin-pronged assault on the Volvo and the Cup is the way to go. Cayard believes so. "I've tried it myself. Back in 1996 I approached a few top organisations like Kodak and went to them with a proposal to do The Race, the America’s Cup and the Volvo. It was a $50m package - five years and three major events. I thought that was the way to go, because as a sponsor you need consistent contact with your consistuency [Cayard's term for the sponsor's target audience].

"It's not of use to dabble in a constituency. It costs so much to crank up the public's awareness of your involvement in a sport. That's an overhead. Then you need to advertise that investment over many exercises, or else you're paying too much. So the subsequent involvement will be cheaper for a sponsor than his first ones. I think it makes sense to set a schedule where these guys can join in for at least five years, and hit prime schedules at least three or even six times."

Tomorrow, in the second part of this interview in Rio, Paul Cayard makes some predictions for the next America's Cup, including his personal rating of GBR Challenge.

Cayard with his skipper and former adversary Grant Dalton. Yes, Grant is holding some flowers.