SINGAPORE: A quality that has made the America’s Cup one of the world’s most enduring contests has been its ability to reinvent itself, and that will be on show again when two space-age yachts race off Spain next week.
The 33rd America’s Cup, starting off Valencia on Monday, will be barely recognizable from 159 years ago when the wooden US yacht America beat a fleet of British clippers and schooners in a race around the Isle of Wight.
This time a huge catamaran, sailing for Ernesto Bertarelli’s Swiss holders Alinghi, will race the equally enormous challenger BMW Oracle, an American trimaran backed by software billionaire Larry Ellison, in three races in the Mediterranean.
It will pit two of the world’s richest men, and some of the best sailors in the world, against each other in 90-foot, hi-tech boats made of materials unimaginable a century ago, such as carbon fiber and kevlar.
Despite all the changes over time, the rules of the 2010 contest ironically have been determined by a “Deed of Gift” drawn up in 1887, which since has become one of sports history’s most litigated documents.
Three years of legal battles since Alinghi successfully defended the Cup against Team New Zealand have determined that the 2010 event will be a three-race shoot-out without the usual preliminary challengers’ regatta.
The acrimony off the water has been thinly veiled at times but both camps say they are ready to race.
“We are confident racing will go ahead as scheduled on Monday — weather permitting — and we are looking forward to finally getting this competition on the water,” Alinghi team skipper and tactician Brad Butterworth said after the latest legal dust-up.
Only last week, uncertainty whether there would be any racing at all ended when a New York court determined it would hear a complaint by challenger BMW Oracle over the origin of the Swiss boat’s sails after the regatta.
Even this week, the teams have been at odds over the race rules, with the Golden Gate Yacht Club — under whose colours the BMW Oracle boat sails — concerned about a rule stipulating no racing in winds above 15 knots, ostensibly because of the power the hi-tech yet fragile multi-hull yachts are able to generate.
While the 15-knot limit was ostensibly imposed for safety reasons, the twin-hulled Swiss boat is thought to have an advantage over the challenger in lighter winds.
The unpredictable mid-winter weather in the Mediterranean port will add an extra twist to the event, with BMW Oracle favoring heavier conditions.
A race jury decided that the principal race officer would determine what constitutes fair and safe conditions.
“This brings some degree of commonsense back to the rules,” GGYC spokesman Tom Ehman said.
The amount of time and money spent in the courts demonstrates the passion invested in the event.
Bertarelli is the scion of the Serono biotechnology empire, a company founded in Italy in 1906 and which made vast fortunes in fertility medications.
Ellison is the head of software giant Oracle Corp.
The multi-million dollar boats themselves are extraordinary, eye-opening craft, Alinghi 5 resembling an enormous praying mantis and BMW Oracle’s boat, USA, a hollowed-out Batmobile - unrecognizable from the keelboats that had predominated.
Bertarelli’s catamaran, sailing under the burgee of the Societe Nautique de Geneve from landlocked Switzerland, is the width of two tennis courts and has a tilting mast that towers 17 storys high.
“There has never been anything like it. Size, power... it’s beyond anything that has been created before,” Alinghi helmsman Ed Baird said in an interview last month.
The American boat is equivalent in size to two basketball courts and has a huge wing-shaped mast. Oracle claim their boat has been clocked at speeds of 40 knots, and its crew say it can slice along with one hull lifted 30 feet in the air.
“We have an insane boat,” foredeck crewman Shannon Falcone said in a team blog (http://bmworacleracingblog.blogspot.com/).
“Every time we’re on the water and sailing, we’re screaming around. It feels like flying,” Falcone said.
