BMW ORACLE Racing sailors depart for the Olympic Games

According to BMW/Oracle, America’s Cup Sailors Carl Williams and Hamish Pepper of have flown to Qingdao, China to compete in the Olympic Games. Interestingly, they will be representing not the U.S. their home country of New Zealand.

They will travel to Beijing to attend the Opening Ceremony on August 8th, before returning to Qingdao. The Olympic Star Class Regatta will start one week later, on August 15th.
Russell Coutts, BMW ORACLE Racing CEO and skipper, wished his fellow countrymen well and said the team was proud to be represented at the Olympic Games. Coutts, who in 1984 won a Gold Medal in the Finn class, also offered a few final words of advice. “It sounds cliché – you’ll feel the pressure but so will everyone else. And like any regatta, have fun and take one race at a time."

In addition to their duties with BMW ORACLE Racing, Williams and Pepper have done extensive Star class training in Valencia this year preparing for the Olympic challenge.
Williams and Pepper won the Star world championship in 2006, and are considered strong medal contenders in Qingdao.

IS THE END NEAR?

Here’s what some of the key players say about the recent NY Court (non-sailors’) ruling, knocking down BMW/ORACLE’s Larry Ellison and propping up Alinghi’s Enesto Bertarelli. As noted below, the paper Spanish yacht club is back in as the so-called Challenger of Record (you’ve heard of Man Without a Country, this is Club Without Any Boats….). Anyway….

Alinghi’s Skipper Brad Butterworth (four-time America’s Cup winning Tactician/Skipper) is reported to have said in Adonnante.com:

“The Cup (AC32) was not too bad and we did amend the protocol 14 times between 2003 and 2007 to achieve this.” In essence, the protocol represents the “sailing rules” for the Cup events and evolves as the Challengers of Record propose changes to the Defender and they are accepted or modified. “…Many of us thought that the first protocol was a bit harsh, however we did correct it and the modified documents was eventually signed by all the potential challengers at the time except GGY/BMWOracle.”

“With the new, bigger boats and cost cutting measure in place, I believe we were heading in the right direction to make the next America’s Cup one of the greatest sporting shows on earth.”

He noted that Sir Keith Mills of England’s TeamOrigin has volunteered to serve as a mediator between Alinghi and BMW/Oracle.

He anticipates the NY Court of Appeals taking six months to make its decision regarding the BMW/Oracle appeal to the recent successful Alinghi appeal of the lower court’s ruling. Then you add 10 months as a Deed of Gift requirement before holding a regatta. Think Summer 2010, perhaps. If the new America’s Cup 90-footers are used, it’ll be only 18 months after everyone agrees to this Alinghi-proposed Jumbo Cup boat.

Here’s how Russell Coutts (BMW/Oracle’s Hired Gun) interprets the recent decision, in a SailWorld.com interview: Surprise, he disagreed with the recent decision, which overturned BMW/Oracle’s appeal throwing out the Spanish “club.” The decision could be “disastrous” for the future of the America’s Cup. He hinted the Americans may be a part of the Cup event at all.

“If Alinghi gets away with this, it probably will signal the end of the America’s Cup as we know it,” Coutts is widely quoted as saying by the Associated Press.

Meanwhile, he’s checking out BMW/Oracle’s new multi-hull boat being built in Anacortes, Washington, home of the U. of Washington Huskies.

“I certainly wouldn’t be recommending that we challenge under such a one-sided set of rules,” he concluded.

His words have credibility. Previously, he sailed unbeaten through THREE straight America’s Cup matches, two for his native New Zealand, and one with Alinghi in 2003, before “a falling out” with Bertarelli.

He adds, needlessly, that the current rules tilt enormously toward Alinghi, the Defender.

Team New Zealand’s Grant Dalton, in yacht.com, has called for Alinghi and BMW/Oracle to negotiate a settlement right now.

He says that Alinghi’s successful appeal means the Cup reverts to the ground rules established by Alinghi and the Spanish “club” in 2007, when Alinghi beat Team NZ in the final leg in the final regatta by approximately an inch.

So, with one last appeal, BMW/Oracle continues its legal challenges against the Defender, a sailing team that beat (in come cases “slaughtered”) all previously contenders for the Cup, including the Americans, who managed to bomb out, on belief in their own press releases about how great they were, in the very first round of the Challenge eliminations.

As it now stands, Alinghi gets to choose the regatta judges, the committee to run it, the umpires and the measurers (and they must all be employees of Alinghi). All seven Challengers have opposed this “Alinghi Vision” of the next sham series or “stacked deck.”

Meanwhile, out on the water, Alinghi’s guys won the IShares Cup in Cowes, with a five-point lead over Team Origin, the British American Team. Oracle’s TWO Extreme 40 crews, Team Cammas and Team Spithill, finished fourth and fifth, respectively.