Paul Cayard - Part 2

Oracle's sidelined helmsman reveals his predictions for America's Cup success to Andy Rice

Right: Where Paul Cayard should have been this week

With Cayard out of Cup action, it was also an opportunity to quiz him about the Sean Reeves affair. While he wasn't up on the very latest developments, having just spent three weeks at sea, he did have this to say. "This is about one person who made one incredibly stupid move." So the prognosis for OneWorld? "Sean worked for them for a while, and might have tainted them by some of his actions. The trouble is, the protocol is not well written.

"First of all it is a grey line, and no one quite knows where the grey line is, and a lot of that is intellectual property that the designers carry around with them in their minds or in hard form. But are they sketches on a napkin or are they full plans of something? It's a very difficult thing. One, it's been very poorly written in the protocol, so there's doubt, there's clouds, there's greyness. Two, it's very hard to police. It could be that all the teams have consciously tried to abide by the rules as they've been laid out to them.

"But later it might emerge that they broke the rules. But they didn't know it at the time so the question is, what should the penalty be for that? So what do you do and do you look at what actually happened and ask if there was any material advantage? If there was material advantage, do you discard that? Or do you have to go on the principle of that, and say: 'Sorry, you broke the protocol of the America's Cup so you're a gonna,' which is not a good thing big picture.

"My hope is that they'll sort through all this and realise none of all that bullshit really matters that much, as long as what we don't have now is collaboration between the design teams that are currently working this Cup. Really there's no harm, there's nothing that's going to affect this America's Cup. I mean, old shit's old shit, right? No one won won the America's Cup with an old mast or an old boat, so what the hell?"

But for the time being, politics cloud the America's Cup and Oracle politics leave Cayard sitting on the sidelines of his own campaign. No wonder he has just treated himself to a new Star boat. What does that tell us about the ambitions for his sailing career? "The two things I'd like to win are the America’s Cup and an Olympic gold medal. That would make my career complete.

"The Star is a boat that when I was a kid was the class of sailing. It was Buchan, Conner, Melges, Lowell North, Elvstrom. The names of the great sailors of the world came from the Star class. Then, when I was still 18 years old I was asked by Tom [Blackaller] to crew in the Star, and I thought I'd really made it. There I am crewing for Tom at 18 years old in the middle of all these great sailors. I fell in love with it as a youngster. I pursued it, I won the World Championships, I have a good record in the Star class, and the boat itself is quite interesting. It's an old boat, but it's evolved just enough to still attract new kids into it. The rig is tricky - it's hard to set the rig up properly. The competition is the toughest in the world. You get a hundred boats, with the best Brazilians like Torben Grael, to the best Swedes to the best Americans."

Click on page 3 and find out Cayard reckons professional sailors have never had it so good...