Here are a few excerpts from an interview on BYM News with America's Cup Management's (ACM) Chief Operating Officer, Michel Hodara, where he attempts to clarify the perception problem surrounding the 33rd Cup protocol.)

On the Golden Gate YC lawsuit:

"Although the GGYC filed suit in the Supreme Court for the State of New York, on July 20, Société Nautique de Genève (SNG) was not served with the papers until August 17. The response to those papers was scheduled to be answered by mid-September and SNG was working on responding by then. However, just 5 days later, GGYC went into court and asked for the time scale to be accelerated. They want it accelerated for the original suit and they also want to know from SNG the racing rules and the location for the multihull challenge they claim for. All that happened in court, on August 22, was that the court set a date for hearing to determine whether there is reason to accelerate things. SNG has to reply by September 5 and the hearing will be on September 10. This was not a victory for GGYC, as the impression has been given. Nothing was decided, the court has not taken any position whatsoever, it has just set a date for a hearing and nobody knows what will happen on the date. The court may agree to the request to accelerate, or it may not."

On being able to turn down challengers:

"Would you think it wise to have, say, four Italian teams? It is impossible for almost any country to provide sponsorship for so many teams, so if you allow a lot of entries from one country you are likely to end up with no really good entry. That’s one potential problem, the other is simple logistics. We have 12 bases now and the most we could accommodate would be 2 new bases, so we have to be able to refuse entries. Even if we could accommodate more, there would still have to be a limit on numbers because of sailing schedules and the practicality of race operations, not to mention planning."
On abolishing the Challengers Commission:

"e have replaced it with a Competitors Commission. Anyone who is honest will tell you that, last time, there were a lot of problems within the Challengers Commission; they often didn’t find it easy to agree among themselves and, when they had thrashed something out, they would then come to us. It did not make the dialogue very constructive. This time, we felt we could shorten the process by having everyone sitting round the same table at the same time; defender, challengers, ACM together. We have already had one successful meeting with the competitors for the next Cup.”