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If It Ain’t Broke – Mess With It
 The America’s Cup is billed as the best of the sailing best, racing sailboats on the water to see who wins. So why, then, does it seem that there is always something to take the luster off of what should be a shining moment for the sport of sailing? When Alinghi won the Cup from New Zealand they set out to make it more interesting and competitive, and that they did. The 32nd America’s Cup was a shining moment, with arguably the best racing seen in the America’s Cup in many years. When matches are decided by seconds, that’s close, exciting racing. Just what the doctor ordered for an event that has seen the finals much less compelling than the elimination rounds. So, after successfully defending the cup, it’s only natural to expect that Alinghi would keep the AC ball rolling, right? Wrong. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” is obviously not an old Swiss proverb. Of course there’s always tweaking to improve things, but to just throw out everything and start over is nuts, or rather, ill advised. But that’s what they’ve done. First they accept a challenger of record that’s a paper yacht club, whose only claim to racing is a kid’s dinghy day. They then present a protocol for the 33rd America’s Cup which is extremely favorable to the defender, basically giving them control over everything, including which challenges to accept. Of course, Oracle and the Golden Gate Yacht Club, and others have taken exception to this and, to make what promises to be a very long story short, it looks like the dispute will wind up in the New York Supreme Court. For those that love the inner turmoil, backstabbing and litigation, you can once again groove to the AC soap opera of the 80’s. For racing fans, your best bet is to put your hands over your ears, cover your eyes and hum a happy tune until the next Cup. Maybe that way you can miss all the falderol and keep your interest up until the sailing starts again. Why isn’t this a “reality” show? The plot is ever changing with quite a cast of characters, and I do mean characters. With Louis Vuitton pulling sponsorship of the elimination series because the event was “getting too commercial,” they’ll have to find another way to “vote people off the island.” Russell Coutts, the new CEO of BMW Oracle Racing (yes, the Russell Coutts of New Zealand and Alinghi) can set the stage: “The existing protocol unreasonably favors the defender. There are numerous problems that have to fixed, and they have to be fixed quickly…” Brought to you by Excedrin. |
