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BMW Oracle have signed three-times
Cup winner Russell Coutts to lead their next challenge
for whatever came next.
The U.S. syndicate's challenge has not yet been
accepted by defender Alinghi while a legal wrangle
hangs in the air.
BMW Oracle owner Larry Ellison, who is suing Alinghi
for what he says are unfair rules they have set
up for the next America's Cup, said he had signed
Coutts as both skipper and chief executive, a post
previously filled by Chris Dickson, who was fired
after Luna Rossa beat the American yacht 5-1 in
the Louis Vuitton Cup semifinals in May.
"Larry's given me pretty much a clean sheet of paper,"
Coutts told a conference call for reporters. "I've
come to the conclusion we both thought very similarly
about how to put together a winning team."
"I agree there is a tremendous amount of work to
assemble a team, to understand what BMW Oracle did
last time," Coutts said. "There were a lot of very,
very good things done and we need to try and build
on that as well as bring in new people ... We'll
be working hard at that over the next period of
time," .
Coutts led teams from New Zealand to back-to-back
Cups in the late 1990s before he and the core of
his Kiwi crew joined Swiss biotech billionaire Ernesto
Bertarelli's Alinghi in 2000.
The 45-year-old Coutts, who has lost only once in
37 match races and who is 14-0 in the America's
Cup final, skippered the Swiss team to victory on
its first try. He subsequently fell out with Bertarelli
and signed an agreement not to work with any of
the challengers for the 32nd edition in Valencia.
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