Too tame?

The Snake looks at the background to the current batch of America's Cup swiping

Recently there has been a depressing amount of fairly standard anti-America’s Cup sentiment littering the yachting press both in print and on the web. While many in the press seem gun-shy in openly criticising the Cup and its competitors, any racing punter can guarantee a top slot in the ‘Letters’ section by posting or e-mailing a spleen-venting tirade against the event. Two themes constantly recur; money and behaviour.

The money issue is particularly dull and can be dismissed swiftly. In common with a number of high profile and expensive sporting events, the America’s Cup involves extraordinary amounts of cash and this feature will always attract comment. It is a peculiarity of human nature that this type of criticism usually coincides with CNN’s coverage of a Third World famine, a deadly viral outbreak or a tragic, natural catastrophe. When compassion fatigue replaces survivor guilt, this argument quickly dies.

The behavioural theme is divided into four sub-sections and concentrates on the activity of owners, crew members, the Cup’s organisation and the media. Much of the disapproval is mundane and pointless, suggesting that the critics have little knowledge of how the Cup has dramatically spun out of control in the past. Indeed, a brief comparison between the current crop of complaints and some examples of extreme behaviour from the Cup’s history suggests that the present event risks becoming too democratic and civilised. It is possible that some truly absurd behaviour is now required to generate a really memorable America’s Cup.

The fuss surrounding the current uber-owners concentrates on their treatment of crew including the supposed rough-justice administered to the Holy Trinity of Connors, Coutts and Cayard. If this is all that can be levelled at the Cup’s grandees, then we are in for a colourless and dull time. There has been some astonishing owner-behaviour during the event’s 154 year history, but one man set an early standard to which subsequent owners must aspire: Windham Thomas Wyndham-Quin, the 4th Earl of Dunraven. A politician and colonial diplomat with too many names and a lot of money, Dunraven challenged for the America’s Cup in 1893 and 1895. Already unpopular in America for an illegal land-grab that transformed a large area of Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park into a private, happy hunting ground for his tweedy chums, Dunraven blundered about the America’s Cup upsetting people with admirable style. In the first race of his second challenge, Dunraven lost to the American yacht, Defender, and immediately accused her owner, C Oliver Iselin, of racing outside the Cup’s measurement rules. The New York Yacht Club (NYYC) threw out the protest enraging Dunraven.

During the second race, Dunraven’s yacht, Valkyrie III, swerved to avoid a spectator boat and rammed Defender, before continuing the race and taking line honours. That the 4th Earl had recently written and published ‘Self-Instruction in Navigation’ and presumably knew what he was doing, cut no ice with the NYYC. Although the collision was clearly unintentional, Valkyrie III was declared DSQ for failing to render assistance, driving Dunraven to further levels of apoplexy. On the final race, His Lordship skulked around the race course failing to finish and went on to publish a number of articles accusing Iselin of illegally tampering with Defender, branding the American an “unsporting trickster”. A small detail may have lifted Dunraven’s spirits during the two unhappy, unsuccessful challenges and provided the rogue with considerable satisfaction. Suffering from chronic gout, Dunraven would often appear on deck wearing a velvet slipper over his swollen foot: believing that a British noblemen would have his finger firmly on the pulse of European fashion, New York socialites immediately began parading around town wearing a single slipper. The man was clearly a scoundrel, but if the current Cup billionaires developed a dramatic dose of the Dunravens, the increased interest in America’s Cup racing would be phenomenal.

While Iselin may have infuriated Dunraven with his underhand trickery (leaving Columbia unpainted to save weight for the 1893 challenge seemed terribly gauche), the earlier Cup defences of General Charles J Paine of Boston between 1885-1887 had already paved the way for this kind of unsporting behaviour. Paine dismissed three challenges in this period with the meticulously prepared yachts Puritan, Mayflower and Volunteer, employing an approach to yachting that partially explains why the Cup remained in America for 132 years. As the British challenger for 1886, Lieutenant William Henn, lived comfortably onboard Galatea with Mrs. Henn and their dog, accompanied by the family monkey and surrounded by a piano, a bath tub and an acre of potted plants, Paine was shaving one fourth of an inch from the deck of his yacht to save weight. It is certain that the homely Henns had a super time during the Cup, but the closest they came to Paine was a 16 minute margin around the course. This sort of intensely competitive behaviour was intolerable in a period when making any visible effort in sport was considered as cheating.

Modern crew behaviour usually manifests itself in a PR press release as skippers, helmsmen or eminences grises relocate whenever the America’s Cup music temporarily stops. The comings and goings of the Dicksons, Kosteckis, Schnackenbergs & Co. assist in fuelling the intrigue surrounding the Cup and provide a tantalising whiff of the turmoil and internal politics within the event. It is, however, far too civilised. It is arguable that the details of strife inside teams is not strictly ‘within the public interest’, but this opinion is academic: the public has an insatiable hunger for the murky aspects of life and the Cup - like most sports - is a deep, dark, fertile lagoon: calm on the surface, but filled with rumour, conspiracy and manipulation…..which is a good thing.

Generally, though, modern crew behaviour and conduct is relatively civilised. For example, recent owners have not had to contend with the obstacles that faced Sir Tommy Sopwith and his yacht Endeavour in the 1934 assault on the Cup. Securing a 2-0 lead over Harold Vanderbilt’s Rainbow, and with the scent of victory wafting around the British camp, Sopwith’s crew mutinied. Striking for a pay increase is a basic human right, but on this occasion it effectively scuppered any hope of removing the Cup from America.

Not even all of the sanctioned America’s Cup ‘legends’ have behaved well. Charlie Barr, the archetypal Cup helmsman and skipper, would merit the modern tabloid tag of ‘Iselin’s Rottwieller’ such was his aggressive technique on the race course. When let off the leash by Iselin, Barr would terrorise the opposition. While steering Columbia to victory over Sir Thomas Lipton’s Shamrock II in 1901, Barr’s illegal tactics were described as “violating the rules of civilised warfare”. Charlie Barr is also a useful name to drop when any modern America’s Cup critic starts complaining about the current nationality content of some teams: although he became an American citizen to defend the Cup, Barr - like Lipton - was a Scotsman. It seems that other than advances in technology, little has fundamentally changed in the America’s Cup.

There has been a lot of moaning about the Cup’s current format: the ‘Acts’ have been accused of ‘trivialising’ the event while the racing has been labelled as ‘boring’. What do these people want? Freak waves, low-flying Black Hawk helicopters, high-speed Hummer chases, gratuitous nudity….? It is a relief that at a time when most of the northern hemisphere’s yachtsman are busy arranging and preparing to winterise their boats, the Cup is managing to spoon-feed yachting entertainment to armchair sailors. The recent Act in Sweden and the Cup’s Oktoberfest in Sicily fill a quiet gap before the Transat Jacques Vabre and Volvo Ocean Race kick off in early November, providing a welcome fix for racing fans.

Another bizarre complaint aimed at the race organisation revolves around the freewheeling, hip-hop, banner script on the event’s website. Okay, so the typeface would be more appropriate on a flyer for ‘One-Eyed Pete's Surf Shack’, but this inability to see beyond the event’s attempt at cool packaging is feeble. America’s Cup Management must be euphoric that the current level of criticism is so lightweight.

It can be imagined that the 1988 America’s Cup fiasco would feature strongly in a vision of Hell for the current event’s organisers: a tremendous disaster that provided The Snake with a vital distraction from the ravages of puberty and successfully deflected an unhealthy obsession with the pint-sized temptress, Debbie Harry. Michael Fay’s arrival in San Diego with the 90ft (27.43m) monster monohull, New Zealand, and his exploitation of a loophole in the Cup’s ‘Deed of Gift’ sparked a glorious bonfire under the backsides of the event’s potentates. The litigation and subsequent court appeals that followed sent Cup critics into a righteous lather of indignation while the smell of blood had legal teams of Armani-clad veloceraptors stalking the event. The humiliating, race course whipping delivered by Dennis Connor’s powerful little multihull, Stars & Stripes, dispatched the Kiwi raiders and concluded a chaotic America’s Cup that most people would choose to forget.

Finally: the media. Here in the Snake Hole, television and satellite reception is a little sketchy, but the internet and written word prevail as a channel of Cup information and comment. The press have been behaving with considerable restraint recently, although this will doubtless change as the event heats up or a bout of dismissals and dubious behaviour provides some irresistible material. However, we are unlikely to see the total lack of press objectivity witnessed in 2003 as Alinghi stormed through the Louis Vuitton Cup in Auckland. The tirade of hostility directed at ‘Team New Switzerland’ in New Zealand’s newspapers spiralled out of control when Alinghi was confirmed as the Cup challenger. With particular attention lavished on the Swiss team’s afterguard, the Kiwi press raged at injustice with Old Testament zeal. The net effect of this ranting hate campaign was a widespread state of panic throughout the country.

But the Kiwi press is not alone in letting the Cup cloud journalistic judgement. Shortly after Dunraven failed to claim the Cup in 1895, the glossy, rustic magazine Field published a letter of rampaging arrogance against America:

“All the higher principles which makes a peaceful life possible between man and man, are so in abeyance as they are in the United States, and where friendship which England feels for her uncultured offspring, is met by a sentiment of inexplicable hatred and jealousy. It is all very well to talk about heredity and cousinship, and all that sort of thing; but these people have no inheritance of sportsmanship.”

(It should be noted that the Field is a fairly harmless publication and not a hotbed of xenophobic extremists: today, it still dispenses invaluable advice on training gun dogs, grooming horses, stuffing hunting trophies and de-worming the servants)

In 2003, the Kiwi press were outraged at a very real threat to New Zealand’s sailing superiority and this was clearly reflected in printed warmongering thinly disguised as patriotism. The indignant, sulky, British reaction to Cup failure in 1895 stemmed from the popular belief that Britannia really did Rule The Waves and just about everything else in the late 19th century: a period when anyone non-British was considered an uncultured, unwashed, thieving surrender monkey. These two examples of reportage may be undignified, but they added significant spice and fire to the Cup.

On 9 October, Act 9 in Trapani closes, signalling an end to America’s Cup racing for seven months. Will the Cup go nuclear in Sicily before the winter hibernation? The event’s curious history suggests that something is lurking in the shadows waiting to pounce.