Ehman and Butterworth 'discuss' the AC

Lively debate on the future of the America's Cup at the World Yacht Racing Forum (inc video snippets)

At the World Yacht Racing Forum in Monaco, so highlight of the first day’s proceedings was the sight of Alinghi’s Brad Butterworth and BMW Oracle Racing’s Tom Ehman being on the same stage, in the same space, breathing the same air. While there were no bouncers to keep the warring factions apart, both had support, Sir Keith Mills aligned with Alinghi (but principally just wanting some form, any form of resolution), Mascalzone Latino legal council Alessandra Pandarese with BMW Oracle, while Paul Cayard (Desafio Espanol) and Stephane Kandler (K Challenge) held the middle ground.

The Forum had brought together this America’s Cup panel to discuss the ‘future of the America’s Cup’ but of course no line-up like this could conceivably avoid discussions of the present hiatus in the Cup and the dispute, whatever that may be today, beyond a desire by both sides simply not to agree.

Tom Ehman opened proceedings neatly ducking moderator Peter Montgomery’s question about how the present hiatus had come to be. Brad Butterworth attempted a similarly benign intro, however did attempt to answer the question and spelled out the success of the 32nd America’s Cup (5 million visitors to the Darsena (Port America’s Cup), 1.5 billion $ of impact on the local city, 25,000 jobs were created, etc).

Butterworth delivered the first snipe: “Desafio was a force to be reckoned with and they started life as an association of the yacht clubs in Spain and that is how they challenged for the Cup last time. But Tom, you took them to the arbitration committee, to sort it out because it is supposed to be a regatta between yacht clubs. Oracle weren’t that happy about that, so they took them to the Arbitration Committee, but common sense prevailed and they let the challenge carry on as an association of yacht club.” (Ehman later stated that this wasn’t the case.)

Butterworth went on to describe why it was a no-brainer that they had decided to partner with the Spanish as Challenger of Record for the 33rd America’s Cup - they had been the hosts for the 32nd America’s Cup and had fielded a strong challenge. “The Spanish were hesitant to continue as an association because they’d had this problem with Oracle, so they formed their own yacht club and wanted to be Challenge of Record, but that hasn’t been taken on so well by you Tom and Oracle, so we’re in court about that.”

He went on to describe a little about the meetings they have been having recently with the 14 competitors “soon to change to 17-18 teams” for the next multi-challenger America’s Cup and how they have changed the Protocol already four times.

See video of the next part here

We asked Sir Keith Mills and Paul Cayard about how the litigation had impacted their campaigns and what effect they felt it had had on the America’s Cup itself.

See Sir Keith Mills’ response

To Sir Keith’s accusations of BMW Oracle Racing/GGYC being too hasty to start legal proceedings, Tom Ehman recounted how when the Protocol for the 33rd America’s Cup had come out “it was awful.” They had contacted the CNEV to try and get “a proper yacht club” to negotiate with Alinghi/SNG and nothing happened, so Larry Ellison chose to file his own challenge with the SNG on the basis that the CNEV was not a valid yacht club. “That was Larry’s call. Russell wasn’t even hired yet. The defender ignored the challenge and 10 days later, rejected the challenge”. After this Ehman said there was no recourse other than to start legal proceedings.

Sir Keith bounced back: “You say that you issued your challenge and you got no response, there is an alternative - picking up the telephone and speaking to people!”

Ehman retorted that on the contrary “a whole lot of talking had been going on.”

Brad Butterworth made the point that there was not a chance they could accept the GGYC’s challenge because they already had a challenger in the CNEV and had legal obligations to them.

Paul Cayard gave his view about the damage the court case had done and restated his view that the America’s Cup should have an independent organisation behind it. See this here

A question was posed that if 14 or so teams are satisfied with Alinghi’s arrangements for the 33rd America’s Cup, then why weren’t BMW Oracle and Mascalzone Latino? Tom Ehman’s responded - how could they sign up without seeing the rules? See his full response here .

Alessandra Pandarese was also given the opportunity to answer this question and recounted an episode in the life of the Challenger Commission during the 32nd America’s Cup which she had chaired. At the end of 2006 they had set up a forum with Alinghi to look at the pros and cons of the 32nd AC to try and improve the event going forward. Points included introducing a new class for the 34th America’s Cup. “For some reason, unfortunately I don’t know why, Alinghi stopped that discussion with us, the challengers,” said Pandarese.

Mascalzone Latino signed up with the SNG to join the competitors meetings for the 33rd America’s Cup, a year ago. However since then Pandarese clashed with Alinghi and the SNG when she refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement prior to going into a competitors meeting at the yacht club in Geneva.

Since then Mascalzone Latino have been subject to a ‘validation procedure’. This has clearly upset team principle Vincenzo Onorato and she read out a letter from him. See this here .

Marcus Hutchinson wanted to find out what would happen if Alinghi or BMW Oracle Racing lost in court. Brad Butterworth said 'simple' - it would be a Deed of Gift Match in big multihulls. The hearings are to be held on 10 February 2009 in New York and according to Tom Ehman a decision is likely to be 30-45 days after that.

Butterworth said that if they lost then the event itself would be held 10 months after that. Sir Keith Mills pointed out that then the northern hemisphere rule within the Deed of Gift would come into play and it would not be held until late spring 2010. Ehman however said that if the court’s decision was that it would be 10 months from their decision then the north/south hemisphere ruling would not be relevant. If BMW Oracle Racing/GGYC lost in court Ehman said that Larry Ellison would cross that bridge when he came to it. If they won then they would try once again to try and negotiate for a normal multi-challenger Cup.

Following on from Paul Cayard’s point about an America’s Cup with independent management we were keen to find out who else on the panel supported this idea. As it turned out, this seemed to be most of them, albeit reluctantly, as this video shows (Sir Keith Mills, Alessandra Pandarese and Stephane Kandler tentatively raised their hands. Stephane Kandler paid tribute to Louis Vuitton’s 25 years of involvement in the America’s Cup.

Matt Sheahan from Yachting World asked the panel if the AC gained an independent organisation, could it be done without it losing some of its prestige. Cayard replied: “With clever work, we can maintain this prestige and history that is quite remarkable about the AC, and yet run a professional event, like World Cup soccer or the Olympics. I think for me the answer is yes, it will have to be done smartly.”

Following on from Kandler’s tribute to Louis Vuitton, Cayard agreed with this and suggested that LV would be a good partner to bridge the transition across to an independent management. “The ACM mechanism should be owned by other stake holders, so that it has objective representation. One example could be, all previous trustees and the winner gets to host to AC. Or a smarter model is that they should leapfrog - that is the way it worked in the star Worlds. No matter what happens in the next Cup, the winner of the 33rd will host the 35th AC on their home turf. Then they have time to create the great harbour that Valencia is. So we keep the trustees involved and we have people like Louis Vuitton. It is the 21st century. It has to be run independently.”

Tom Ehman however was of the view that amending the Deed of Gift to allow an independent organisation would be almost impossible. He went on to cite six points that were needed to protect the integrity of the Cup as “a Challenge Cup”. These included fair and competitive rules, cutting costs, limiting it to one boat, keep technology strong in the Cup and don’t dumb it down.

Following this Sir Keith Mills pointed out that Ernesto Bertarelli would have said a very similar thing. “It is a bit gaulling that we all agree, but don’t agree. One thing I would suggest is that all the challengers agree to pay for an independent commission to study all the structures that exist and look at the legal issues, look at all the issues and come back to us all with a recommendation on how the AC gets structured in the future. I think it has to be done by a third party because Ernesto’s vision of what happens is going to be different from Larry’s or mine or Paul’s.

We posed the question - given that with ever stronger challengers it is becoming increasingly difficult to defend the America’s Cup (Alinghi’s argument) and on the basis of teams being limited to just building one boat, hence Alinghi had chosen to enter the ‘challenge selection series’, what was the panel thoughts about this, given that this was a principle sticking point with BMW Oracle Racing.

See Paul Cayard’s response here, harking back to it only being a short time ago that it was completely taboo for challengers to train or sail against the defender.

So - resolution? Ha! As we thought - here are two parties who are unable to agree the time of day.