America's Cup teams to join the iShares Cup?

With three syndicates now owning Extreme 40s this circuit could see the clash of the titans in 2008

The original warring factions over the America’s Cup - Ernesto Bertarelli/Alinghi/Societe Nautique de Geneve v Larry Ellison/BMW Oracle Racing/Golden Gate Yacht Club - may still be twiddling their thumbs as they wait for the New York Supreme Court’s decision over the fate of the 33rd America’s Cup, but it appears they are busy once again on the water. Keeping all bases covered in the event Justice Kahn sides with the Americans and allows a Deed of Gift Cup to go ahead in multihulls, both teams have acquired Extreme 40 catamarans in which to train. Alinghi have got two of them, while BMW Oracle Racing only have one, but may be trying to acquire a second.

Aside from milling around off Valencia, both teams, one imagines, are keen to get some multihull race training in on these unfamiliar boats, but already one avenue has been blocked to BMW Oracle Racing. Prior to moving to Valencia last year to take up his new role heading BMW Oracle Racing, Russell Coutts was resident in Switzerland where he from time to time raced on the D35 catamaran Banque Gonet et Cie on the Lake Geneva against his old boss Ernesto Bertarelli, last year’s winner of the D35 Championship, the Challenge Julius Baer aboard his Alinghi catamaran.

Coutts appears to have been angling for Banque Gonet et Cie to this year become a BMW Oracle Racing training vessel, but this opportunity was given the thumbs down by the D35 class last month resulting in the boat’s owner Nicolas Gonet, one of the original sponsors of the premier Swiss cat circuit, withdrawing his entry this season. One can sympathise with the class - typically the D35s are sailed by amateurs with a few pros on board, such as Loick Peyron, Coutts, Alain Gautier and Yvan Ravussin. Allowing a full-on BMW Oracle Racing campaign to join the party would have raised the bar too high. Despite putting his hands up and publicly declaring that the decision was nothing to do with him, Ernesto Bertarelli cannot help but have enjoyed winning this dispute in his own back yard.

With the ORMA 60ft trimaran circuit down the pan in France, this leaves the iShares Cup and the Extreme 40 circuit for the America’s Cup titans to get some multihull race training in. Neither team has publicly confirmed its participation yet, but given they are both training in Valencia on these boats it doesn’t take a powerful mind to join the dots.

There is also a strong rumour that the America’s Cup big guns may be joined by another, Britain’s own TeamOrigin who are believed to have recently acquired their own Extreme 40.

The prospect of the America’s Cup teams joining the iShares Cup could be a mixed blessing to the event. While it will certainly raise the game, attract substantial international media attention and its organisers OC Events are keen to attract top flight sailors, one wonders if Alinghi and BMW Oracle Racing fully appreciate what they are letting themselves in for. In contrast to the America’s Cup where the game is about the ultimate finesse in yacht racing, the iShares Cup race events are unashamedly all about crash and burn, the ultimate in unfeasibly confined, short course hull-flying racing as close to the public as it is possible to be, providing maximum spectator appeal. It is the equivalent of racing Formula One around your local supermarket car park.


One can foresee Brad Butterworth losing his cap...

This was fantastically demonstrated during the iShares Cup event in the swimming pool-sized stretch of water immediately off down town Amsterdam last year and is something the organisers intend to take a step further this year. Once again Amsterdam set to be on the schedule, but this year the organisers are hoping to run another event in northern France at St Malo. Most yacht races being held in St Malo would see their competitors lock out heading for a race course located at sea off the ancient town’s impressive ramparts. Not so with the iShares Cup where the intention is to hold racing within one of St Malo’s inner basins, probably the Bassin Vaubin, the well known location for the build-up prior to the start of the Route du Rhum. But this is a location where thanks to its size most race organizers would think twice about holding an Optimist regatta.

Similarly the circuit hopes to visit Hamburg, where instead of sending the Extreme 40s up and down the Elbe, the plan is to race the boats on the Aussenaister, a 1.6 square mile lake in the centre of the city, a location which iShares Cup Race Manager Alan Hillman describes as the Hamburg equivalent of “being in the middle of Central Park” complete with joggers and families having picnics. The Aussenaister is so shallow that if racing does take place here the Extreme 40s will find themselves mostly sailing with their daggerboards up.

The iShares Cup maintaining its policy of scary race courses comes at a time when the size of the fleet has nearly doubled since last season. At the start of last season when OC Events got involved there were five teams racing. This had grown to nine by the end of the season, a position OC boss Mark Turner says he’d hoped they would be at the start of the season.

15-16 boats will be in existence by the time the circuit kicks off on Lake Lugano at the end of May, their manufacturer, Marstrom in Sweden, churning them out as quickly as they can with a full order book. It is expected that this season the number of teams regularly competing could be as low as 10 or as high as 15…

With the increased number of boats, it seems that at the more confined venues the organisers may find themselves forced to alter the racing format and run heats. This has yet to be set in stone and according to Alan Hillman is also highly weather dependent. Sending a number of 40ft long tweaky racing catamarans around tight venues in 20 knots of wind is substantially more dangerous than if there is 5 or 10.

In addition to the iShares Cup, the Extreme 40s will this year be competing in the JPMorgan Round the Island Race and some will no doubt take part in the Centomiglia in Italy. New Volvo Ocean Race CEO Knut Frostad is also attempting to get the boats to compete at some of the stopovers of his race, and this should fall neatly outside of the iShares Cup program that concludes mid-September.

Beyond this OC boss Mark Turner makes no bones about the fact that the longer term goal of his circuit is to take it global. However the key thing seems to be maintaining the balance between the mass spectator appeal close quarters high adrenalin crash and burn aspect that is certainly the class’ métier, while at the same time attempting to keep the racing meaningful. For it cannot just be show.

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