Russia guns for the America's Cup

For a fledging team, the Karol Jablonski-steered Synergy is far from being an also ran.

Back in 1992, at a not-dissimilar phase to where we now lie in the America’s Cup cycle, one of the most torrid episodes in the build-up to the Louis Vuitton Cup that year was the mud-slinging between two Russian teams, Age of Russia and Red Star ’92, both desperately trying to become the first from their country to campaign a challenger for the America’s Cup. Neither succeeded.

18 years on and Russia is a very different place with Russian sailors making their presence felt in many classes in sailing, notably the Dragons. The Audi MedCup in recent years has seen two Russian boats – known in the fleet as the ‘black Russians’ (Valars) and the ‘white Russians’ (Synergy). While they haven’t won, neither have they been also-rans, with both teams acquiring highly competitive 2008 generation boats – Valars picked up Mean Machine when Peter de Ridder walked away from the circuit, while in a similar style Synergy purchased the BMW Oracle Racing boat after it had been sailed for just one regatta. Valars have stood down from the Audi MedCup for this season, but Synergy remain as buoyant as ever.

Bolstered by the team’s five Moscow-based owners, - Pavel Gorelov, Vladimir Senko, Vladimir Smyshlyaev, Mikhail Tuzov and Valentin Zavadnikov - Synergy is lining itself up to achieve what their forebears didn’t in 1992: to become the first fully fledged Russian challenger for the America’s Cup.

Since last summer their helmsman has been Polish former Match Racing World Champion, Karol Jablonski, who holds a unique advantage over his match racing peers in this instance as he speaks Russian. The crew racing at the Louis Vuitton Trophy in La Maddalena is an even mix of Russian sailors and international pros including tactician Rod Dawson, Chris Main on main sheet (of course!), Zachery Hurst on downwind trim, Mikkel Rossberg on upwind trim, Jim Turner grinding, wizened ex-Alinghi pitman Josh Belsky and former Prada bowman Bernard Labro, while the Russian crew fits in between.

On their first outing as a Cup team at the Louis Vuitton Trophy in Nice last year, Synergy put in a top performance for a fledgling team finishing third, knocking off many of the top players en route, although Jablonski said at the time that the light conditions on the autumnal Cote d’Azur may have helped.

This season Jablonski has taken the helm of their TP52 on the Audi MedCup, where in Cascais they were seventh, although this was after just five days of training and was Jablonski’s first ever foray into the TP52 class. As he told thedailysail this season isn’t the easiest year to start out in the Audi MedCup with five other America’s Cup teams competing. Given Synergy’s participation in the Audi MedCup for the last four seasons, so there is a larger proportion of Russians on the TP (eight to four).

In La Maddalena at present they are one of five teams in joint third place with two wins.

While their competition’s sailing teams feature wall-to-wall professionals, on Synergy it is more challenging because although Jablonski has made sure to have experienced hands in all the key areas, a significant part of their campaign is about training up the Russian crew and one of the owners typically sails in the crew too.

“They are learning - slowly slowly realising how difficult this game is and how much time they need to achieve this goal. Their goal is to have a Russian team on this kind of boat and we explained it is going to take years. It is not like a Dragon or a TP52,” Jablonski told us. “If you want to learn you still need pro-sailors, experts with big experience in order to learn faster, because we don’t want to spend years doing this - it will cost more money and you’ll never get there and you are not going to get the experience. So we have five to seven Russians, but the key positions are held by non-Russians. The big idea is to bring for sure more Russians on board with every event, but we don’t want to lose too much on performance.”

One of the significant issues on board the boat has been language, with simultaneous conversations going on in Russian as well as English. “Obviously I am the only one who can communicate with everyone in all languages. When you want to get into the detail I am the only one who can do that. Even Maxim [Logutenko, the team manager] and a few other guys who speak English well, they can’t translate everything. So I have to ‘polish’ my Russian (ha ha).” Polish humour.

One wonders if there are Russian words for flat top main, jumper strut, barber hauler or jockey pole, but Jablonski says the English terms are all understood. “For sure it is not easy. The communication side it is a big disadvantage.”

The driving force behind the Synergy campaign is that the majority of its ‘five owners’ herald from Vladivostock at Russia’s easternmost extremity. They all live in Moscow now and miss the sea. Of the five, Valentin Zavadnikov is the most prominent, being a high flying politician within the Russian government, Chairman of its Industrial Policy Committee.

Zavadnikov told thedailysail his hopes are for Synergy to have a “strong to medium” position in the fleets they sail in and stresses that their objective isn’t primarily winning the America’s Cup. “Our special goal is to make a Russian professional sailing team and in two or three years we can have a team that can go to the America’s Cup or to any different competition, because a problem for us is we don’t have so many Russian professional sailors.”

As to the transition from the TP52 to the clunky ACC boat, Zavadnikov isn’t so keen: “We have some guys from our crew who have experience match racing and all sailors want to try sailing America’s Cup boats, but the America’s Cup is very expensive... Personally for me the TP52 is better because it is much faster, you race in a fleet and it is more interesting. It can do 22-23 knots and it is more stable.”
Zavadnikov was born in Ukraine, but trained in the far east of Russia originally as a maritime engineer. Clearly has the sea in his blood. Since 2001 he has also been a representative for the Saratov region (its capital some 450 miles southeast of Moscow) on the Federation Council of Russia, the upper house in the Russian parliament. Saratov may be landlocked, but has the mighty Volga river dissecting it and Zavadnikov is President of the yacht club there.

From the Vladivostock contingent is Maxim Logutenko, the Manager of the Synergy Sailing Team. Logutenko’s background includes running the yacht club in Vladivostock, where he says they have a budding youth sailing scene including 30 Optimists, 10 Cadets and 15 Lasers. The fleet there also includes a number of old IOR boats originally from Japan and Korea including a One Tonner and around 30 Quarter Tonners! He also at one time had a 49er Olympic campaign and in 2008 was part of the Russian crew that won the Dragon Europeans.

“For us it is now two campaigns – TP52 and the Louis Vuitton Trophy and we are thinking about having more,” Logutenko told us of their plans. “We would like to develop some young Russian sailors to be professionals in the future.” The Synergy recruits to the sailing team come from all across the country, including some from former Eastern block countries such as Ukraine and Belarus.

In addition to their AC and TP52 campaigns, Synergy also would also like to get two Russian teams out on to the international match racing circuit. Already Russia’s top up and coming match racer Eugeniy Neugodnikov is campaigning under the Synergy colours. In 2005 Neugodnikov won the Grade Two event on Lake Lugano where he beat a field that included Ian Williams and Paul Cayard. A Congressional Cup regular Neugodnikov, this year his finished sixth ahead of France’s Damien Iehl and Switzerland’s Eric Monnin. There his crew included Alexander Ekimov who is on board the Cup team in La Maddalena as a trimmer.

We suggest that there might be some good former Soling sailors in Russia. Logutenko agrees, but says they are really looking for young sailors.

When it comes to the America’s Cup, clearly this is an ambition, but like many teams they want to know the details – the date, venue and type of boat before they finally commit. Logutenko says he is aware that the easy part of running an America’s Cup team is the sailing. It is the management, the politics and the building of a team to include not just sailors but also boatbuilders, designers and engineers that is the hard part. He says they would like to field an all-Russian crew for their America’s Cup campaign but it depends how much progress is made. Given that the 34th America’s Cup may not be until 2014, with a considerable amount of Louis Vuitton Trophy-type racing before then, including qualifiers for the Louis Vuitton Cup challenger selection series, then this is a much stronger possibility.

Obviously aside from a blip in 1992, Russia is a new country to the America’s Cup but interest from the media there is growing. The team has its own PR team and they invite media from Russia to events. Several were also in evidence at the 33rd America’s Cup. “It is increasing. It is not so popular as in Europe and America, but sailing is starting to be more popular,” says Logutenko of sailing popularity in his country.
When Alinghi was planning on a multi-challenger 33rd America’s Cup, Ross Field was representing another Russian syndicate. But hopefully Synergy have learned the lessons from 1992. “We know them. That was not a team, they started building it but they stopped. So we’ll see. Maybe we will be together – who knows?”