The new boss

Grant Simmer tells of why he left Alinghi and what he expects in his new role as CEO of TeamOrigin

As we said in our editorial this week, Sir Keith Mills’ appointment of Grant Simmer as CEO of TeamOrigin we feel is one of the greatest indicators to date of the British America’s Cup team’s serious intent to capture the 34th America’s Cup. While several names were being mooted, but Simmer’s name was decided top of the list and none come with his depth of experience, spanning almost 30 years and culminating him managing the Swiss double America's Cup winning team.

For Simmer is a Cup legend. Back in 1983 he was navigator on one of the most famous boats in AC history - Australia II, the first boat to prise the Auld Mug from the New York Yacht Club mantelpiece. He went on to be a tactician on Australia III and then navigator on Australia IV for the 1987 Cup in Fremantle, was sail co-ordinator and mainsheet trimmer with Spirit of Australia for 1991-2. In 1993-5 he moved fully into the design side working as Design Co-ordinator for Fluid Thinking who were behind the One Australia and Sydney yachts.

For the 2000 Cup in Auckland he worked as a coach and adviser for America True before joining up with Alinghi soon after the initial group of Coutts, Butterworth, etc had been recruited by Ernesto Bertarelli. At Alinghi for the America’s Cup in Auckland in 2003, Simmer was on the design team, was also Team Co-ordinator and tactician on the B boat. When the America’s Cup moved to Valencia in the post-Coutts reshuffle, Simmer was promoted to General Manager and Design Coordinator, effectively running the team with Brad Butterworth.

So Simmer ticks the boxes as a sailor, designer and manager – all areas where expertise is vital for running a Cup team successfully. As a straight talking Aussie, he also has a hard side to him and this combined with his depth of experience make him well equipped to keep TeamOrigin on the rails, or put them on the rails as some might argue judging from their performance in La Maddalena this week.

Timing it seems has been crucial in Simmer’s departure from Alinghi, as he explains: “Since the last Cup I had been quite busy just packing up everything we had including all the Version 5 gear and everything relating to Alinghi 5 and securing all the physical assets and intellectual assets of Alinghi. And we were looking at doing a Volvo and working really quite hard on that, with a few of the sailors and certainly all of the designers. We had had a meeting in Abu Dhabi and it looked quite positive. Our budget had grown substantially and we needed to find some funding, so we waited and waited for the decision from Abu Dhabi. I don’t know if it has been made public but we weren’t successful in getting that money and as a result we decided not to go ahead with the Volvo.”

The Alinghi Volvo Ocean Race campaign we understand was to have been skippered by Rodney Ardern with Juan Vila navigating, but has now been put on the back burner. Even if Abu Dhabi had come through they would be late to the game, having to go through the design process as more advanced teams are already starting the build of their boats.

“While all that was going on I had spoken to Ben [Ainslie] and Keith [Mills] and, pending what happened with the Volvo, I was going to consider going with them. The Volvo ended last weekend and so I joined up with Origin,” states Simmer. There remains, he says, a strong desire to keep Alinghi going, but at present it is unclear in which direction that might be.

“I’m pleased to say that I left on very good terms after 10 years and some really great times. For me it was a really difficult decision to leave Ernesto and the guys I’ve worked with for such a long period of time, but I was also quite keen to go to a new young team and saw that as a new challenge and that’s why I made the decision. I agonised over it, as people close to me know!”

While we thought that Simmer and Ben Ainslie had previously had contact on board Neville Crichton’s Alfa Romeo on which they both sail occasionally, according to Simmer they were never on board at the same time.... “But I knew Ben and it is hard not to respect what he has achieved. I was intrigued and interested to sail with him. We talked quite a bit and we are on the same page...and Iain [Percy] and Juan K. We don’t know what the next Cup will be about yet but we’ll know that over the next couple of months that will become a bit clearer.”

The conjecture is that the 34th America’s Cup will be in San Francisco in 2014 in 80 something ft high performance monohulls, but Simmer isn’t so certain. “There are some people who think it will be in multihulls. I don’t personally think that is the right thing for the Cup, but it will be different if it is. It is not at all clear what they are proposing in terms of the boat and the event. They have got the difficult task of weighing up all the different options commercially and competitively and making a great event and I think people have to allow them the time to sort that out.”

Obviously after almost three years of Simmer being close to the sharp end of the Alinghi side of the dispute with BMW Oracle Racing over the 33rd America’s Cup, we put it to him that his relations possibly aren’t the best with the new AC defender. “I don’t know. It has been a bitter couple of years, but all of us have been involved with the Cup [for a long time] and things move on and we start a new process. They have won the Cup and they are the guys setting the future of the event.” With the ink still drying on his contract with TeamOrigin, he has yet to have contact with Russell Coutts and his team.

Within TeamOrigin, Simmer’s role is slightly different to the one he most recently held at Alinghi. There he shared management duties with Brad Butterworth and was also co-ordinator the design team. At TeamOrigin he reports to Sir Keith Mills and below him the structure umbrellas out to the various department - design, marketing, sailing, shore, boatbuilding. At Alinghi the finance and marketing departments were separate.

With the Brits he is more strictly CEO. “Juan K is our designer and I want him to manage that as much as he can. I’ll just try and support him and it was the same at Alinghi. We had some incredible people Rolf [Vrolijk], Dirk Kramers [engineering] and Mike Schreiber [sails] and Michel Richelsen [CFD] and Kurt Jordan [CFD]. I didn’t really have to do anything! I didn’t have to make some decisions there. We just had some really fantastic guys. And I have come into an environment where Juan has a well established office with all the parts you need to run a successful America’s Cup campaign.”

We ask Simmer if there is a winning formula for running an America’s Cup tean. “I think it is a matter of being committed, being motivated, communicating with each and every one of us, people feeling comfortable in their role in the team. It is basic stuff, no different from running any other sporting team or business. A real sense of pride in the team, that is the fundamental, but largely getting good communication and making sure that everyone really feels that they know what is going on and why we are doing things and that they are really buying into the strategy.”

This is a credo straight from Alinghi. “We were a pretty open team and even to Ernesto [Bertarelli], everyone had access to him and up until 2007 it was working well. It just got incredibly difficult with the DoG match, because it was dominated by a legal strategy and not a sporting one.”

While Simmer denies it, we imagine it would be hard for him to take up his role within TeamOrigin, following his 30 year track record, without immediately seeing some things that his experience has shown, they are doing wrong. “That would be a terribly vain thing to do,” Simmer counters. “My job at the moment is to talk as many guys as I can. Today I spent a couple of hours on a chase boat with Kelvin Harrap and Stevie Erickson and then when the sailors were coming and going with the transfers, I was just talking to guys and looking at what was going on and getting a feel for how they do things and thinking maybe we can do things a bit differently here or there. I don’t want to impose my will on the way they are operating, I want to see if we can adapt. The nice thing for me, fortuitously, is that we don’t know what the next Cup will be like, so it is time to take stock of what we have got and then when we learn more about the next Cup we can develop a strategy.”

So the [fifty] million dollar question– can TeamOrigin win the 34th America’s Cup? “Absolutely. That is why I have joined. I think if you look at Ben [Ainslie] and Iain [Percy] I think they are up for it and I hope they are given an opportunity to compete at an equal basis against all other comers and we operate in a regime where it is a sailing event where all teams compete on an equal basis. Those guys are definitely up for it.”

Simmer is set to be based at the TeamOrigin office in the UK for the remainder of this year or until such time as it becomes apparent where the 34th America’s Cup will be held and the locations for the Louis Vuitton regattas before it.

In the meantime, coming up fast is the TeamOrigin versus BMW Oracle Racing dust up to take place in the Solent during Cowes Week, a chance for the America’s Cup to be showcased to the British public. “I think given a bit of history between an English and American team it will be a great event,” says Simmer.