The downfall of Dickson

The BMW Oracle Racing CEO, skipper and helmsman faces the music

Chris Dickson is probably the most highly paid individual in the 32nd America's Cup on the basis that he works for BMW Oracle Racing, the team with the highest budget, (rumoured to be (and probably escalated up to) the 150 million Euro mark) where his role for the last four years has been as not only skipper and helmsman, but also CEO. And yet under his hand Larry Ellison's team, which many had tipped to be the boat to go up against Alinghi in the 32nd America's Cup, have been knocked out in the semi finals.

At present there is a lot of rhetoric going on about why this has happened. The biggest shock is just the difference in performance of boat and team given the way they trail blazed their way through the Round Robins compared to their lacklustre performance this last week over the course of the semi-finals. In the former BMW Oracle Racing was leading for much of the competition only to fall in the final day decider against Emirates Team NZ (as well as to China Team when USA 98 suffered a broken headfoil). Generally she seemed to be the form boat sailed by a team that looked confident to the point of arrogance. Equally her boat speed at that stage appeared to be noticably better than the other top challengers, enough, for example, to make up for an occasionally erratic performance dogged by occasional poor starts, wrong calls for the first shift and gear failure.

But during the semi-finals Dickson appeared to have been fully rattled by James Spithill's aggressive and precision pre-starting culminating in Saturday's double penalty. Spithill is widely regarded as the most talented match racing helm in this competition and this week he has been on fire, demonstrating the depth of his skill. It is perhaps for this reason that last night Dickson was ordered off the helm (and off the boat) by syndicate head Larry Ellison to give the unfortunate Dane and B-boat helm Sten Mohr a go behind the wheel. "The decision to take me off the boat today was Larry’s decision and it was his call to make. He is the owner and it’s his call to make," said Dickson, who wouldn't expand on the reasons Ellison gave, when we asked him ("Good question. I guess you had to ask it, but I know you don’t really expect to get an answer"). In the event Mohr got off the line cleanly, without penalties, but wasn't to be the vital ingredient required to make the required difference for the Kiwi-crewed American team.

Equally some modifications to USA 98, including, it is believed, a change to a larger rudder to help manoeuvrability in the pre-starts against Luna Rossa, are perhaps what has caused the down turn in her performance. Yet even with the larger appendage Mohr at one point in the pre-start seemed to stall the boat. It is equally possible that the way USA 98 was moded for the Round Robins gave her an advantage in the lighter conditions whereas USA 98's moding for the semis hasn't been as effective for the more typical 10-13 knot average Valencia sea breeze conditions experienced over the last week.

This evening in Cup World Dickson was on hand to face the music, Peter Isler, BMW Oracle Racing's navigator, unquestionably one of the coolest men on the planet and the face of the team over the last few days, no doubt thanking his lucky stars for a break from his press conference duties on this tricky day.

The primary thrust of Dickson's rebuttals to why the most powerful challenge in this Louis Vuitton Cup had not only been ejected at semi-final stage but also failed to round one mark ahead of the Italian team, boiled down to (conveniently): BMW Oracle Racing have done nothing wrong - but, wow, weren't Luna Rossa great???

"If we could pinpoint why [we weren't winning] we would have changed things from a month ago, from three weeks ago, from even one week ago," said Dickson. "Those of you observing, as well as those of us internally, would look at our campaign, our boat and our performance and our crew and say 'hey, we’re pretty solid'. In a four year campaign up until a week ago we were looking pretty good. With my CEO hat on today I spent time around the base this morning and this evening not with my head focussed on sailing in a race - I watched the performance on TV live and felt it looked pretty strong. But man, the other guys looked stronger." If this performance inbalance between BMW Oracle Racing and Luna Rossa is all down to the Italian team's improvement then they must have been sandbagging during the Round Robins... BMW Oracle Racing has one of the largest R&D teams in the 32nd America's Cup and yet they weren't able to pull anything out of the hat?

"Being neighbours to Luna Rossa we’ve perhaps watched them closer than most," Dickson continues. "They have improved their rank considerably in many many areas: The crew work errors we were seeing only a few weeks ago, we didn’t see this week. The performance upwind that they’ve got this week looks a little bit better than it did a few weeks ago. They’ve sailed with very adventurous tactics and they’ve turned out well this week. Three or four weeks ago they had the same adventurous tactics and on the media side you used words that were a little condescending perhaps of the tactics you and we looked at as being a little crazy. The same crazy tactics were there this week but they looked very very clever. Luna Rossa has done a very good job of stepping up."

Particularly perplexing the US team is that Luna Rossa have cleverly nailed BMW Oracle Racing in many different areas this week making it hard to see where the Italian team's advantages lie. "We can go back over the races we did, as we have, and we can look at each race and there are times in each race where a few little things made a difference, but it was a few little things," says Dickson. "There were races where we started in front of Luna Rossa and they sailed around us. The race we beat them was when we started behind and we sailed around them. There were times when 5m of boat speed our way would have put us in front. At those times this week when 5m would have made the difference one way or the other it was Luna Rossa that got the 5m. We would lose 5m and three weeks ago in that same position we felt we might have gained 5. The competitive difference between the teams this week was different to what it was three weeks ago."

When asked the same question in a different way 'why they had lost - what had they lacked?' Dickson retorted: "Wins - simple. We look back. We felt we used the time well. We certainly felt we used the money well. We developed a lot of good hardware, we’ve got a great crew and a great team. If we could say we had a slow something or there was one thing we would probably be a bit more happy about it. Luna Rossa have improved their upwind and downwind sails significantly, their starting, their crew work, their wind shift calls on many many levels, whereas a month ago you might have said those were strengths on our team. Well our team has got better in the last month. A month ago there was a competitive edge to us. This week you take 10 different issues, eight or nine were strengths to Luna Rossa. But that’s sport."

Another potential issue with BMW Oracle Racing many are drawing to light is the team's management structure. With Dickson's apparently megalomanic position being skipper and helmsman on the race boat as well as CEO of what is the biggest Cup team in Valencia, when problems did occur it seems that with this management structure they could not be dealt with effectively and quickly enough.

Dickson of course, doesn't see this as having been a problem. He says it is a myth how much he does, adding that he hasn't had much to do in the CEO's role recently. "This is a four year campaign and I have very much enjoyed the dual role of CEO and skipper. It has been an opportunity to get fully entrenched in both at different times. At the early part of the campaign it was about a CEO’s role. I have a very good and strong executive management group that have been fully responsible for the running of the campaign for many many months. I haven’t been near the CEO role for many months. Every crew member out there from every boat spends considerable shore time doing other things. If you’re a trimmer you are going to spend a lot of sail loft time. If you are a bowman you are going to spend a lot of spar/mast loft time. Every crewman out there is an integral part of the team not just on the water but on shore as well. Fortunately for me I don’t have skills in the sail loft or the rig shed..."

As to what lies ahead Dickson said: "The future for the team is that Larry is committed to having the team continue. That was decided some time ago and that hasn’t changed. The future for myself is that I signed up for this campaign. We have some tidying up to do and some wrapping up to do over the coming weeks and then I’ll be quietly heading back to New Zealand and taking my family to Disneyland on the way home probably. Life goes on."

So shall we see Dickson in the 33nd America's Cup? This is the America's Cup. One should never bet against the most improbable things from happening.