XXXIIe America's Cup

 

 New helmsman is no help for Oracle (12/12/02)
 (source : NY Times)
It takes some gumption to throw a billionaire off his own boat. It takes even more to tell a proud helmsman that he is not needed on this day in the world's premier boat race, never mind all the other days the man won races for you.

Chris Dickson has gumption, volumes of it, enough in his veins to sink a $75 million America's Cup campaign. Which is to say, maybe too much.

Dickson, the unblinking, impetuous skipper of Larry Ellison's Oracle-BMW yacht, decided he could do a better job in the semifinals of the Louis Vuitton challenger series than Peter Holmberg, the helmsman who had brought the boat this far.

So he told Holmberg to sit one out and grabbed the wheel today, trying anything he could to win a race. It was like a fed-up coach activating himself because he did not feel his players were getting the job done.

The gamble looked good for a while. But when the Swiss sloop Alinghi caught a left wind shift on the fifth leg, Dickson and his cut-and-paste crew were beaten, leaving them one loss from being swept by Russell Coutts, his New Zealand countryman and rival.

Coutts and his Alinghi crew, never more than 15 seconds behind, crossed the finish line 46 seconds ahead of Oracle, taking a 3-0 lead in the four-of-seven series.

Dickson, who removed Ellison from the boat early last month and promptly went on an 11-0 streak, is running out of moves against Alinghi and Coutts, whom he cannot quite hunt down on the white-capped waters of the Hauraki Gulf.

"I decided to steer today in consultation with Larry Ellison," Dickson said. "We haven't had the boat speed we want. If we have to face Alinghi in a month in a sudden-death match, then we've got some good experience."

Dickson quelled the controversy over his decision as best he could, replying to a questioner, "I'm not sure what details you want about the change."

With one more victory, Alinghi will reach next month's challenger series finals. Another loss will send Oracle into the repechage round beginning Dec. 20 against the winner of the OneWorld-Prada matchup.
 
 And the rich get richer... (11/25/02)
 (source : Washington Post)
By winning their best-of-seven quarterfinal matches quickly with identical 4-0 shutouts, Alinghi and Oracle BMW Racing advanced directly to the four-boat semifinals, which don't start until Dec. 9.

Their opponents will emerge from this week's best-of-seven repechage matches pitting OneWorld against Stars & Stripes and Prada vs. Sweden's Victory.

It means that while the others beat each other up on the race course in a struggle to avoid elimination, Alinghi and Oracle can head off in seclusion to test and optimize innovations in boat design, keel and rudder shapes, rigging, crew work and sails, all in a bid to get faster.

And while the others use up more of their limited allotment of sails, Alinghi and Oracle can save their best for later.

"For us and Alinghi, time is our friend" said Chris Dickson, "We've just come from a half-hour meeting where Bruce Farr had us going through a long list of improvements they've been working on."

Likewise, said Russell Coutts, "One of the good things about the way this series is set up is that we now have 3˝ weeks off. We've got all sorts of ideas, but to do something with them you need time. It's your most valuable asset."

The format is playing out just as race organizers had hoped. Team New Zealand routed Prada, the challenger in 2000, in a 5-0 shutout to retain the America's Cup. Afterwards, Louis Vuitton Cup competitors complained they were hampered by a schedule of too much racing and not enough free time to test and improve the boats.

"For years," said Bruno Troublé, former French skipper and founder of the Louis Vuitton Cup in 1983, "the challenger selection process was run by the weaker teams. They were in the majority and they set it up to keep everyone involved as long as possible".

"This time, of nine challengers, five were seriously aiming to win", he said. "As the majority, they created a tougher process which eliminates the weaker teams early in the game".

"The idea is, don't waste days and days sailing against weak teams because you don't learn anything," said Troublé. "The hope is that the new process will produce not just a challenger, but a strong challenger that will be a threat to Team New Zealand".
 
 AC Syndicates Begin Race at the Bank (11/24/02)
 (source : NY Times)
How do you spend upward of $100 million on a sailboat race? That question is foremost on the minds of the syndicate backers here, where budgets for America's Cup yachts have climbed to staggering levels and money flows like bilge water.

Four of the nine challengers are spending more than $60 million each, and nearly all privately grumble that the others are spending more. But asking a syndicate head to tell you where his money goes is like asking him to sketch his keel on a bar napkin.

"There are a lot of different ways to distribute your money, and only one of them is right," Bill Erkelens, the chief operating officer of Larry Ellison's Oracle-BMW team, said, explaining why he would not give out his team's numbers. "We think it's ours."

Only a fraction of a budget actually goes toward building sailboats. A carbon fiber America's Cup yacht costs $2 million to $3 million. Figuring out what to build, however, raises the overall costs. "To build them is cheap," Erkelens said. "To design them is not cheap."

Research and design — which includes tank-testing hulls and keels, and wind-tunnel-testing for masts, rigging and sails — can account for up to a quarter of a top campaign's total budget. Smaller syndicates make do with smaller research-and-design budgets — the British team GBR, for example, spent less than 10 percent of its money on design — but those teams quickly hit the wall in the quest for speed.

Teams with more resources for design can build components for different conditions, in hopes of gaining an edge as the competition progresses.

Oracle, for example, has 12 fins and bulbs, six masts (at $450,000 each) and an assortment of rudders, and can try different combinations of these appendages at will, a prospect that troubles the competition.

The real financial drain on the current Cup campaign budgets is not hardware, but talent. While some crews stick with their skippers for years — Team Dennis Conner stands out as the most loyal group, with several members having sailed with Conner for two decades — the moguls have had to get their crews on the open market.

"We have 140 people, and 90 percent of them are the top in their field," Erkelens said. "We were bidding against the other billionaires. Prices went up."

A mainsheet trimmer on a top boat can make as much as $240,000. A run-of-the-mill grinder makes around $14,000 a month for the the campaign. Oracle has 36 sailors to crew its two boats, and they have been practicing together for nearly two years.
 
 "Chris (Dickson) has done a brilliant job" (11/17/02)
 (source : Stuff.co.nz)

The American's syndicate swept its quarter-final series against the vaunted OneWorld Challenge and booked a mouthwatering semifinal with Russell Coutts' Alinghi Challenge.

Ellison said Dickson had had a "night and day" impact since he recalled the sidelined Kiwi early in round robin two. Oracle has won 11 races in a row with Dickson in charge. Dickson has brought a razor edge to the syndicate with Ellison identifying a huge change in the communication of the afterguard.

"A lot of people were concerned about us making the change after one race of the second round but we weren't sailing the boat as well as we could and we weren't communicating very well on the back of the boat," he said. "The communication is now very, very good and the whole of the afterguard is working better. It is not just the addition of Chris."

Alinghi and Oracle go directly into the semis starting December 9. The other two semifinalists will be the winners of the quarter-final repechages which begin on Saturday.

Dickson has vowed Oracle BMW will step up another gear for the semis. "I am sure we will see Alinghi go to another level just as we expect to go to another level," he said. "There will be more close racing for sure."

Dickson said the syndicate held a 30-minute debriefing with designer Bruce Farr after its series-nailing win against OneWorld.

"He has had us going through a lot of improvements that they have been working on and we have talked about how we are going to implement the improvements over the next three weeks. We have got quite a long list and plenty to work through."

The Oracle crew will have a day off today but Dickson said the syndicate would be out on the water tomorrow.

Dickson said the syndicate was very happy to win 4-0 but suggested the clean sweep was a little flattering. "The racing was a whole bunch closer than the scoresheet suggested and we had a reminder at the last leeward mark when OneWorld was there inside a boat length," he said.

Ellison was cut from the sailing team by Dickson but the syndicate boss said he wanted to get back on and again helm Oracle. However, he said it was Dickson's call and indicated his personal ambitions may have to take second place to what was best for the team.
 
 Oracle team issue warning to rest of fleet (11/16/02)
 (source : NZ Herald)
The Oracle team issued a clear warning to the America's Cup challenger fleet after they have blitzed through their quarterfinals against American rivals OneWorld and straight into the semifinals, winning the series 4-0 on Saturday afternoon.

Not many would have picked such one-sided dominance between the two American heavyweights of the Louis Vuitton Cup, but Oracle made it look easy, leading off the start and staying clear ahead of USA65 to take the gun 33 seconds ahead.

OneWorld have used a new boat, USA65, for these quarterfinals, which may have had something to do with the lopsided racing.

"This is a marathon not a sprint. We have a long road ahead", explained James Spithill. "We have also been through a lot over the last two years and if any team can pull it off its ours.".

Oracle now will not race again until December 9, joining the Russell Coutts-skippered Swiss-based Alinghi team in the semifinals.
 
 Oracle makes new afterguard change (11/12/02)
 (source : ESPN)
Oracle BMW Racing made a major on-board leadership change for its first America's Cup quarterfinal race.

Chris Dickson will call the tactics during the best-of-seven series against Seattle OneWorld, replacing New Zealander John Cutler.

After picking Dickson as its tactician, Oracle listed world match racing champion Peter Holmberg, Australian Ian Burns and Italy's Thommaso Chieffi under the generic designation afterguard.

Burns is usually navigator, Holmberg helmsman and Chieffi has alternated with Cutler as tactician or strategist.

Dickson had indicated at a skippers' press conference Monday that some changes might be made to the Oracle afterguard throughout the quarterfinals.
 
 Oracle team member quits (10/25/02)
 (source : Foxsports)
America's Cup-winning sail trimmer Stu Argo has quit the Oracle America's Cup challenge a day after the appointment of New Zealander Chris Dickson as its skipper and helmsman.

Argo, of Grosse Point Woods, Mich., served his final day with Oracle on Friday. Spokeswoman Joanna Ingley said Argo had "departed the team to pursue other interests. He will be sorely missed."

The resignation of Argo, who sailed on 1992 America's Cup winner America3, is the first since Dickson was promoted Thursday to a controlling position in the Oracle sailing team.

Ellison said Thursday that Dickson would now oversee all areas of sailing performance and have sole responsibility for choosing crews for each race. "Chris is now responsible for picking what sailors are out on the water every day," Ellison said.

Argo and Dickson are sailing contemporaries. Both competed in the America's Cup for the first time in 1986-87, Dickson for New Zealand and Argo for the Heart of America syndicate.

Argo sailed for America3 in 1992 and coached America's all-woman Cup challenge in 1995. He was with the New York Yacht Club's Young America syndicate in Auckland in 1999.

He has sailed with Dickson and the Oracle team on the world match-racing circuit this year.

Now, there were unconfirmed reports that other crew members would be close behind ...