Cup favourites?

Russell Coutts and Brad Butterworth spoke to James Boyd about the Alinghi team's prospects

Despite coming from different continents there are many similarities between the Swiss and Seattle teams. Both are 'full on' first time campaigns and have therefore had to start from stratch employing personnel be it the design or the sailing team to the whole administrative side of what is effectively a multi-million dollar company.

Both teams have very diverse and international employees. This is even reflected in the name of the campaign: Alinghi. "It was the best name we could come up with," says Coutts. "Alinghi really doesn’t mean anything. [It is not a trade name.] For me it is a good name, our team is a very very international team. Certainly we’re linked to Swiss, but not in the same way that Team New Zealand is linked with New Zealand. Certainly we know where our roots are, but on the other hand we have a hugely diverse team this time. So that sort of thing is important."

Significantly, Alinghi also have a base of knowledge that stems from a wide variety of different America's Cup campaigns.

For example on Alinghi's design team, the principle players are Grant Simmer, who is design co-ordinator and a man who has been involved with the America's Cup since he worked on Alan Bond's winning Australia II campaign in 1983. Other significant players on the design team are Rolf Vrolijk (as in Judel/Vrolijk who worked with the Spanish in 2000) and Dirk Kramers (who has been involved with the Cup since 1977 and significantly worked on America3 in 1992).

"There’s something like 12 or 16 designers in our group now but also a lot of the other people in the group, certainly the sailors, contribute a fair bit to the design process, so it is a nice team environment there," explains Russell Coutts. "We certainly won’t be able to blame the designers if we don’t come up with the goods."

Coutts is clearly pleased to have jumped ship to Switzerland and has been relishing the challenge of setting up something new. "For some of us, it is a more interesting concept," he explains. "Certainly from my point of view and I know some of the others in the team, just being able to work with different people, because some of the people [at Team New Zealand] we worked with for 15 or 20 odd years. And they were fantastic times. I would never do anything differently. But eventually it comes time for a change."
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