10 year itch

James Boyd catches up with Paul Cayard to discuss his Olympic and America's Cup aspirations

Paul Cayard - Whitbread Round the World Race winner, five time world champion, five time America's Cup veteran - is 44 and says he's going through a mid-life crisis.

Rather than buying a red sports car or taking to the oceans to do a Mini Transat campaign as some have, Cayard is dealing with this by seeing how age affects his performance in the Star.

The Daily Sail caught up with the moustachioed one at the Swedish Match Cup in Marstrand over the weekend where he was once again crewing for Peter Holmberg's Team Pelle Petterson Yacht. With two America's Cup helms on board plus the highly experienced AC crewmen Jared Henderson, Mike Sanderson and Robbie Naismith, the team were race favourites until they were dispatched by Chris Law, in unbeatable form, in the semi-finals.

Despite four out of five of the crew having been with Oracle in Auckland (Henderson was with Team New Zealand), Cayard stresses that the team has no ties to Oracle. "Peter and I won the Bermuda Gold Cup together a few years ago, so we talked about sailing together again here and in Bermuda again later in the year," he said. At the Bermuda Gold Cup the team will face almighty competition including the likes of Dean Barker and Russell Coutts.

But this is merely a diversion. At present Cayard's main focus is on his Star campaign. "I’m 44 now. Percy and Freddie Loof are the same age I was when I won my Star Worlds and I was really fit and strong back then, so it is really fun to try to compete against these guys 18 years after. That’s my personal goal - when you size things up you always look at your strengths and weaknesses. Of course I’ve got 15-18 years more experience than those guys, but they have 15-18 year younger bodies, which right now is a good premium. So I’m going to train really hard and see if I can minimise the difference on the physical side and bring the advantages along and see what happens." At present he says that Loof and Percy have the edge on him, but he hopes he can cut this down.

At home in the States, Cayard and his crew Phil Trinter - who was with him at AmericaOne and Oracle and is also a former Star World champion (crewing for Joe Londrigan in Kiel in 1993) - won the pre-trials in the Star earning them a place to represent the USA at Athens at the pre-Olympics and then in Cadiz for the Worlds. For Cayard this will be his tenth Star Worlds - his first was back in 1978 and he became World Champion ten years later. After a 10 year break from the class he finished fourth and top American at the Worlds last year.



Cayard and Trinter at the Miami Olympic Classes regatta earlier this year

The Star is supposedly one of those classes where age is less of an issue compared to the more hairy 49er or Tornado or smaller Laser and Finn, but Cayard says this is becoming less the case. "It’s tough and the way they’ve changed the weight rules in the Star class has changed the game a bit - it really favours the young guys, particularly the ex-Finn sailors because it favours heavy skippers and the total weight has gone down, so you have to hike hard with the weight you have.

"The ideal weight would be a 300lb skipper, so you have to keep working towards a heavier and heavier skipper. Peter Bromby has a huge advantage because he weighs 250lb. Percy and everyone who is good is trying to gain weight."

The way towards this is not chocolate and a season ticket to the golden arches, but three hours a day in the gym. Looking at Cayard, even at 44, the man is most definitely an athlete.

On to the America's Cup and Oracle was a distinctly disappointing experience for Cayard as Ellison juggled his frontmen: from him to Dickson to Holmberg and back to Dickson. For Cayard, the result was going from being skipper of the Louis Vuitton Cup winner, to running his own campaign, AmericaOne to being sat on the sideline as Oracle swept through to the finals of the Louis Vuitton Challenger series without him.

So it must have been depressing watching all that went on in Auckland? "I wouldn’t call it depressing. I just got involved with a bad guy, which just goes to show you’ve got to watch out who you get involved with," says Cayard candidly.

At present he is trying to get his own campaign going again in the States, while also talking to other teams. Rejoining Oracle, he says, is "definitely a non-existent possibility".

Eminent yachting journalist Bob Fisher believes that Cayard is likely to end up with another Italian campaign again due to his high profile in that country following his skippering Raul Gardini's Il Moro di Venezia. With the Cup coming to Europe Italy is expected to field several challengers, with Vincenzo Oronato's Mascalzone Latino team believed to be going again, Patrizio Bertelli wavering over Prada taking a third crack and rumours that Gucci might be trying their hand.

"America’s Cup is a big thing in Italy so it’s very enticing for people who want to have a high profile to get involved with the America’s Cup," says Cayard.

Cayard holds a non-executive position at Nautor and is known to have been in discussion with Nautor Group/Salvatore Ferragamo fashion house boss Leonardo Ferragamo about a possible Cup campaign.

"He’s sniffing around a little bit," says Cayard of Ferragamo. "But I don’t see him taking on a whole challenge all by himself that’s for sure. He’s just toying with the idea at the moment and there is a lot more talk about it than reality. The media and everybody is hyping that up more than he is."

As to setting up his own team again, Cayard is currently testing the water in the States. "It is going to take a fair amount of private money - $30-40 million - and the ideal set-up is to have all $70 million of the private money guaranteed with the people guaranteeing the money willing to wait for the sponsorship to come along and to assume whatever differential there is - which is what Ellison and Bertarelli do. That is the best recipe, because then you can start the campaign and run it from the get-go on the $75 million or whatever it is you need, then whatever comes in over the four years in sponsorship just goes to repay the initial investors. It is hard to get $75 million committed unless you have got a billionaire or seven or eight wealthy guys who all get along and want to combine some how."

Timing-wise a Cup campaign needs to get going as soon as possible, but at the very least by the end of this year. "The best people will be getting offers from Oracle and Alinghi, who are up and running, so they’ll start feeling the pressure to join up in the fall when things start to get a bit slow."

Equally important is to work out who you would challenge through. "This time there are a lot of things to consider. If you do win the America’s Cup it is quite a responsibility. And for Bertarelli the fact that he couldn’t ever run it on Lake Geneva is turning out to be an advantage for him because he’s got it out to bid and the huge logistical cost to set up an America’s Cup village and do it properly will be born by the host city and that’s $120 million taken off his back."

Cayard believes that the Cup going to Europe is a good thing as bringing the Cup closer to countries like Italy when there is a large number of people interested in it, has to more interesting to sponsors.

He's equally impressed by the ability of Alinghi to run a good event. "They have a very good core of people. That’s certainly one thing which Bertarelli brought to the party: He hired the best guys on the sailing side and then he has buddies who are all Harvard grads and are all good business people. In a way I think sailing if you look at the programs has lacked that really professional business side. Most of us - Dennis Conner, Blake in the past - we adapt ourselves to the business side, but that doesn’t mean that we’re really trained to do that. So I think that Bertarelli’s group of buddies with Michel Bonnefous and himself - he’s a Harvard MBA and he obviously knows how to run his big company. So they’ve got good strength there." Saying this Cayard does hold a degree in Business Management.

As to his future in offshore racing - this is not in the Cayard gameplan at the moment. A Volvo Ocean Race campaign he believes would conflict with progressing a Cup campaign and Cayard doesn't think there have been sufficient changes to the round the world race to provide him with a fresh challenge. "It’s basically what I’ve done already," he says, although he may have unestimated how much faster the new breed of 70 footers look set to be.

By the sounds of it, with his attempting to win an Olympic medal while getting a Cup campaign together, he will have quite enough on his plate.