Gone racing

Now a TP52 crew, Emirates Team NZ boss Grant Dalton talks to us about the Cup, Volvo and more LV-type regattas

Emirates Team New Zealand Team Principal Grant Dalton has temporarily replaced Cup sailing with the Audi MedCup circuit - he, as well as Sailing Manager and former Tyco skipper Kevin Shoebridge, are blowing off the cobwebs competing on board their new Botin & Carkeek designed TP52 this season.

While Dalton still looks fit as a fiddle, he has beefed out since his leaner days prior to the 2007 Cup when he was competing in Ironmen. “I am a grinder. I am 87kg at the moment - so I am the most overweigh! The bastards just brought my target down! It’s a conspiracy!” he moaned to us as an aside when we hooked up with him in Alicante last week. On board the TP52 Dalton bounces the jib, works on the foredeck and grinds on the back pedestal, similar to his role on the Kiwi Cup boat, although he admits he is less knackered when he gets in after a day’s racing.

So why has Emirates Team NZ joined the Audi MedCup? “It gets all of our people involved - sailors, designers, everyone. It is a development class," Dalton states. "It is really the only class at the moment where you can default from the AC to. It was a decision we took a year ago, but not really expecting it to be as good a decision as it’s turned out: Marcellino [Botin]’s had a good history, these guys have all sailed on them and Cookson could build it. It’s the only decision we could make as it turned out.”

Originally the plan was to simply do one year on the Audi MedCup circuit to keep the team in business between America’s Cups. Now that the first opportunity for the next multi-challenger AC - and this is being optimistic - seems to be 2011, Dalton says they may hang on to their boat with a view to competing again in 2010. However he warns it will be important to ensure that Audi MedCup in 2010 circuit doesn’t conflict with the Louis Vuitton regattas his team are hatching with LV’s Bruno Trouble and BMW Oracle Racing, which since Auckland has come on board as an additional stakeholder of what he hopes will become a circuit to bridge America’s Cups.

Dalton's vision is that this circuit will have independent organisation from the America’s Cup and thus in the future could continue on regardless of what was happening between challenger(s) and defender in the AC, with a series of events cast in stone and planned three years in advance. “This [the 33rd AC DoG match] has highlighted, sponsors hate ‘if, maybe, possibly’. You need something which is ‘these events, this year’ and then there is the Cup at the end. And the two can live with each other.”

His proposal would dramatically help continuity between ACs and he cites what might happen in the present scenario: “You don’t know who is going to win the Cup in February, but you could plan for the next three years for Cup-related events and you could start doing deals with cities. You know there is a Cup at the end of it - that doesn’t change and all those rights remain the same - but you do know that there are events and you could sell those now. From a commercial point of view, you need a way to advertise. The only reason that we were able to fund the last one [Cup campaign] was because there was somewhere to advertise - the Acts - they were a great idea. So it is a variation on that theme, but with an independent body that runs it with the interests of the teams.”

However he doesn’t believe in independent organisation for the America’s Cup itself, taking a line similar to that of BMW Oracle Racing: “The Deed of Gift can’t be altered and we would not favour that. It worked just fine until Alinghi got hold of it. It has been the greatest sporting trophy in the world, until they got hold of it.”

Dalton hopes that the Louis Vuitton-style circuit will kick off this year. As to venues it would of course make sense to go where existing Cup teams are based, however in the end he reckons “the mighty $ will rule”. Thus South Africa could be interesting - Team Shosholoza have said they are keen to host an event - and this could coincide nicely as a way into the World Cup soccer in Durban next year. Equally Dalton points out that somewhere like Hong Kong could be a good place for marketing for most sponsors. He also mentions Marseille.

As to Alinghi’s accusations that the Emirates Team NZ and BMW Oracle Racing boats used in the Louis Vuitton Pacific Series weren’t equal, he has a different view: “They [Alinghi] picked the fast one and we thrashed them. The boats were %!**%!* equal: We thought there was about a 9m advantage in over 15 knots to 92 up a beat. 92 was the boat we raced in the Cup, but we took the Cup appendages and put them on 84 to equalise the boats. We laughed when that all blew, because we knew there was no difference. And if you looked at the statistics - they didn’t back up their claim either. It was something like 56% raced 92 to win and 44% had 84. Within that there is too much margin of error - basically they were pretty even. It didn’t stack up - it was rubbish.”

While Emirates Team NZ have dropped their lawsuit against Alinghi and their yacht club, the Societe Nautique de Geneve, there is clearly no love lost between them. Prior to Thursday’s court appearance Dalton told us that he hoped “Alinghi get a seriously good bloody ticking off and get told to ‘get on with it and make sure you don’t end up in front of us again’. There’s no doubt they have been dragging their heels. They are now late and they are trying to catch up and they will throw every diversion and minefield into the road that they can and it is only really the courts that hopefully will eventually get tired of that and tell them to ‘get on with it or they’ll really cop one’.”

On Thursday the two teams were told by Justice Kornreich to mediate between each other, which Dalton says would be about as happy as it would be between Barack Obama and George Bush. In this dispute he seems to have fully sided with BMW Oracle Racing. “I have learned to trust Oracle and I don’t think that is blind faith either. They haven’t put a foot wrong. They have been consistent. I have learned to trust Coutts and I think whatever he was, he has grown to be a doyenne and he understands the responsibility he has now in the sport. He hears what I hear. I really rate him. It has not come out yet: Yes, they are warring, but there is another side. There is a genuineness within Oracle for the [good of the] sport and that has never come out.” What Dalton thinks of Alinghi, we’ll just leave you to imagine…

As to February’s venue, Dalton intepretes Thursday’s court session as meaning that the 33rd America’s Cup can be held in Valencia or the Southern hemisphere in February, rather than Alinghi’s assertion that they can now hold it effectively anywhere. However he thinks that Alinghi will opt for Valencia rather than anywhere else. “[Moving it from Valencia] I think it would be more harangue for Alinghi than it would be for Oracle based on the time frame in which they have to tell them [ie Alinghi have to announce the venue six months before the event] - Oracle can move easily. Also there is probably money in Valencia to hold it and they have both got bases there. So I can’t see any reason not to hold it in Valencia.” However as we have seen, making any such predictions in this America’s Cup is always dangerous.

Dalton reckons that the wrangling over the 33rd AC is not over and while there now seems to be divided opinion over whether the venue can be Valencia or the northern hemisphere in February 2010, the next court appearance could well be over the racing rules. “I think there is another opportunity for Alinghi to twist the system by creating an environment to try and make it unfair. The rule is the ‘rules of the yacht club’ – that is what the Deed of Gift says, but if they try and twist that, that is a whole other avenue.” As an example Dalton reckons Alinghi might try and impose wind ranges preferable to themselves for the 33rd AC.

Last man standing?

One of the intriguing aspects of Emirates Team New Zealand is how they survive. Their funding for the last Cup came from the Emirates airline, Toyota and the Spanish brewery Estrella Damm and the New Zealand government. However less well known is that their team also received considerable private backing from a number of individuals both in New Zealand and abroad, such as Peter de Ridder, but primarily from one Matteo de Nora, who ironically is Swiss-Italian like Ernesto Bertarelli. De Nora’s family company is Gruppo De Nora which describes itself as being 'recognized worldwide as a leading supplier of technologies for the production of chlorine, caustic soda and derivatives, as well as the largest worldwide supplier of noble metal-coated electrodes for the chlor-alkali industry and for the electrochemical industry in general. Energy saving and environmental protection are the Group's distinguishing technologies. De Nora has built more than 500 plants for the production of chlorine and caustic soda and for the electrochlorination of industrial waters in 60 different countries.'

In the last couple of years Dalton says that Matteo De Nora has retired from the family company but has considerable interests in New Zealand and is currently having a new superyacht built there. His present maxi-yacht Imagine has been seen at most Cup regattas around the world. De Nora has quietly backed Team New Zealand since the 2003 Cup. “He is a friend of mine. He is a businessman. He is the major funder of this boat [the TP52]. He post-dates me and then as I came in I got to know him really well and he now helps us a lot. He is a great guy. He is quite reserved and shy but we get on well and he seriously gets what is going on and understands it and he has been really successful. He loves New Zealand and what the team stands for.”

In terms of Emirates Team NZ’s commercial tie ups, Dalton says that all their 2007 sponsors remain in place, but these deals are all Cup-dependent and are set up to re-activate once there is any certainty of the next multi-challenger AC.

Oddly Dalton presses the point that among the existing Challengers, with the exception of BMW Oracle Racing, they are the only man standing, TeamOrigin having whittled themselves back to next to nothing and “the Spanish have just fallen over in the last few days as well”. He reckons that most teams, including his own, will have significant problems if the next multi-challenger America’s Cup is any later than 2011.

Dalton seems convinced that TeamOrigin skipper Ben Ainslie, who was obviously his team’s B-boat driver prior to the 2007 Cup, will ultimately go to Alinghi. “There is nothing known, but to me that is an obvious thing that would happen as time goes on. And he would thrive - he is the right sort of guy for their culture and environment. I think they need someone like that if they went back into a normal Cup cycle. These guys, like Dean [Barker], they just get better and better and better. And he is the obvious guy to me. So I think that gives [Sir Keith] Mills a longer term problem.” Again making predictions such as this is usually a dangerous business.

If the next Cup is not until 2013, as most reckon it probably won’t happen in 2012 due to the Olympics, then we put it to Dalton that surely the obvious thing for Emirates Team NZ to do is to become ‘a sailing team’ rather than solely a ‘Cup team’. This would give them the opportunity to do something Dalton is clearly keen on: the 2011-2 Volvo Ocean Race.

“We all get a year older every year. We will certainly look at the Volvo. There is a jump time [between AC and Volvo], I don’t know when that is, but it is coming. It would be hard to both. Financially it could be impossible to do.” He ponders a moment. “If you could separate them off you could do both, but raising money at the moment – forget it, you won’t raise 5 cents. So it would be quite hard, unless it became a separate thing with say Costa Smerelda, it would be a jump by us from one to the other. It is a possibility for sure, assuming the companies would come over with us and to retain Team New Zealand as such.”

Dalton was already in contact with the YC Costa Smerelda, who were keen to do the next Volvo Ocean Race prior to the start of the current event, but says he didn’t push this deal as at that point he was counting on a multi-challenger America’s Cup to be on the cards.

As to the changes Knut Frostad and his team are looking at for the 2011-2 Volvo Ocean Race, Dalton says he hasn’t studied the detail, and would prefer to wait until decisions are finalised. Our man seems a little sceptical when we put it to him the latest view in the Volvo camp: that for the next race team budgets may be capped at 15 million Euros. “It is $%£$£*** impossible to do that race for 15 million Euros and expect to do anything other than a Green Dragon. It is a 30 million Euro race and it always will be.”

As always it is a pleasure to talk to Dalton for whom at a time when there is so much grey, particularly in Cup land, only deals in black and white.