"You can't second guess with hindsight what things we might have done differently," said the world's fifth richest man. Within a hour of the final press conference for the Louis Vuitton Cup, and three hours of ceding victory to Alinghi, Oracle BMW boss Larry Ellison was on his plane out of the Cup and out of town.
In all due deference to one of the most successful turbo-capitalists the world has seen, there are things Oracle BMW could have done differently and they all revolve around management.
With the final four races of the Louis Vuitton Cup Final sailed in flat water and soft winds, the speed differential between the Farr-designed USA 76 and Vrolijk-designed SUI 64 was hard to discern. Only when the Alinghi boat was pressed, on fresher beats or hot reaching angles, did she seem to sink down, grow in length and become the more muscular boat.
No, if there was daylight between the teams it was in personnel. Here Alinghi - tight, talented and relaxed - were the antithesis of Oracle BMW. This may read like flawed thinking, but if there was one thing Ellison did right after sacking Paul Cayard and Chris Dickson in 2001, because their personalities clashed respectively with his own or with the sailing squad, it was bringing Dickson back halfway through Round Robin 1.
Plainly Oracle BMW needed impetus, a catalyst, and one of the grinders on board told Ellison as much. Dickson provided that. USA 76 continued to speed up and one wonders how momentum was lost over the previous months without someone central driving the effort from the heart.
In Alinghi, they have Russell Coutts in that role, with his trusted lieutenant Brad Butterworth at his shoulder. Coutts understands that you need an all consuming energy to drive a Cup campaign to its highest level. He is the heartbeat of Alinghi.
Given that Alinghi were late into the hiring market after Prada, OneWorld and Oracle BMW, what he has achieved with a team drawn from 14 countries, which blends his own Team Magic (Butterworth, Simon Daubney, Warwick Fleury, Murray Jones and Dean Phipps) and a couple of old hands (John Barnett won with Dennis Conner in 1987 and Josh Belsky with Bill Koch in 1992) with total newcomers is utterly remarkable.
Granted, Prada went straight to the top of Challenger heap last time, but the level of competition was nothing like it has been in this Cup. The minnows of the 2003 event, say Sweden or even GBR, would have been decent-sized, viable middle/top table contenders three years ago.
So USA 76 went through the trials with Peter Holmberg and John Cutler on and off the boat, with Dickson steering sometimes and at other times not, and tacticians Tommaso Chieffi, Eric Doyle and Cameron Dunn having varying levels of input. How galling it must have been for Holmberg to have come into this Cup as the world's number one match racer and steer through the LVC Final with Dickson back-seat driving at his shoulder, yelling at one point: "Do you know what VMG is?"
As I said, management and people; so often these irrevocably twinned elements define a Cup team's success. "Get the right people in the first place and the whole thing becomes easier," says Coutts.
Quite.
Tim Jeffery, 20 January 2003
