Stephane Kandler on the America's Cup

The K-Challenge boss says he won't be buying Groupama 3

So would any of the other challengers for the 33rd America’s Cup be interested in taking up Alinghi’s proposal of preceeding it with a multi-challenger event in big multihulls? The home of the maxi-multihull is certainly France and so we caught up with K-Challenge boss Stephane Kandler, at present attending the RC44 event in Cagliari. K-Challenge have recently acquired an RC44 and we expect they will be joining the Coutts roadshow shortly.

Kandler’s reaction to Alinghi’s position, as outlined in Geneva yesterday, was blunt: “They have to do their match and that’s all. It is a waste of time trying to involve other people in a multihull race that was not decided by anyone. So I don’t really see the interest of this to be honest. So I hope that as soon as possible we will have a race between them, because it seems they will never come to an agreement. There will always be a good reason not to make an agreement. So it is better that they do it and that’s it.”

Kandler says that like everyone he was hoping for some reason to prevail for the good of the sport and that they might be granted a multi-challenger event in monohulls as all the challengers had agreed with Alinghi and as BMW Oracle Racing seemed to be proposing too. But as he says, he hoped for this, but wasn’t naïve enough to expect that this would be the outcome.

“I think in reality it was never very far away,” says Kandler on why they couldn’t reach agreement, despite their positions being so close. “They all want a multi-challenger, but they want to make the decisions. It is kind of ‘who controls the event’. Right now Alinghi is the defender and they want to do it their way and Oracle wishes to be that - and so now they have won the right to be the next Challenger. So, as I said, if they don’t solve the problem together, we can’t do anything. That is why I have never made any bets and so on, because it doesn’t depend on us. It is unfortunate, but what I wish is that at some point that they stop sending confusing messages to the outside, so that it is clear: there will be a DoG match and…finished. And then they do the DoG match together and who wins the DoG match will take the Cup.”

So what does this mean for K-Challenge? “It doesn’t change anything,” says Kandler. “We never really stopped from the last Cup. For sure I always said that I didn’t see the interest in investing in a big team and so on, because there was so much uncertainty. On the other hand we try to keep a core sailing team, which we did. Sebastien [Col] is sailing on the World Match Racing Tour and he is now sailing on an RC44 and we have bought an RC44. We did the Louis Vuitton Pacific Series - so all the things that are linked to the America’s Cup, like match racing and so on, we are still involved with that and support Sebastien and try to keep on going with the minimum investment, but we still invest to continue.

"So the decision doesn’t change our strategy, which is to sail as much as we can in various projects and we want to propose to boat owners and race organisers to be on board or manage their program, so we try to sell our know-how and build our own projects like the RC44 and so on. I think that is important, especially in France, because we have very few owners and very few big boats on which we can sail, compared to Italy and Spain and some other countries like the US, so we have to find the finances to do that. So that is what I am trying to do: build a platform in France where we are able to sell sponsorship to finance the programs and we partly fund the campaign,. For sure we need other backers, that is why we are also open to selling our know-how to newcomers or owners who are looking for teams with turn-key operations.”

So he is not tempted to buy Groupama 3 – for that boat was built in France and therefore with a bit of trimming of the hull to reduce it to 90ft or adding a vestigal mizzen and increasing it to 115ft and also probably upping the sail area, it could be a possible vehicle for K-Challenge, even though it was built to race offshore and probably isn't for sale.

“No, for sure not. What a waste of time to go there and to race against someone who is better prepared than we are. Maybe Groupama is interested?! For me it would be a joke to go into a race like that.”

Can he see any of other challengers being interested in a multi-challenger event in big multihulls? “If they want they can, but even if I was very rich I wouldn’t do it for sure. To me it is more a communication strategy – to say ‘look we are open to multi-challengers’. But to me it is a joke.”