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Club:
Societe Nautique de Geneve, Switzerland
Skipper: Russell Coutts
Design:Rolf Vrolijk
Main Backer: Ernesto Bertarelli
Main Sponsors: UBS and Infonet
Budget: $55 million |
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www.alinghi.com |
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Next
in line to win in many people’s book are Alinghi Swiss Challenge,
the team that former TNZ skipper Russell Coutts left New Zealand for.
If you were drawing up a blueprint America’s Cup team, you wouldn’t
end up far from this one. Coutts was drawing up that blueprint team
when he left Team New Zealand and had the pick of a group of sailors
who had won the Cup twice. And Coutts was doing it all with $70 million-plus
of Ernesto Bertarelli’s money.
But the blueprint wasn’t without its imperfections. While Coutts
and his team would certainly have been able to remember the key design
details of NZL 60, many of the inherited Swiss design team members
were not renowned for their previous America’s Cup performances
despite their prowess in other areas of racing yacht design, although
technical co-ordinator Grant Simmer was the navigator of Australia
II in 1983. Alinghi were unable to do better than the embarrassing
Swiss boat Be Happy for a trial horse, although they did a creditable
job of making it fast enough to provide a viable tuning partner for
SUI 64, the first of two new boats that was launched early in the
year.
Like the Swedish Victory Challenge and unlike most of the other teams
with competitive previous hardware, Alinghi needed to get a new 2003-generation
boat into their camp as quickly as possible to get themselves up to
at least 2000 America’s Cup pace. The newest boat was arriving
late in summer – as late as possible in the development phase.
Aside from the boats, the Alinghi crew reads like a Who’s Who
of America’s Cup and world sailing. Coutts and his trusty sidekick
Brad Butterworth are the centrepiece, along with Team Magic members
Warwick Fleury and Simon Daubney. Jochen Schumann now has a key role
in building an Alinghi crew that is likely to include team owner Bertarelli
in a navigator/number-crunching role.
Alinghi are everyone’s favourites not just to win the Louis Vuitton
Cup, but to bring the America’s Cup back to Europe. Sailing skill
and Cup campaigning is not the issue. Design is the question and if
Coutts gets a fast boat, he won’t lose many races by making mistakes
on the race track.
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