Bruno Trouble interviewed on the two Cups

by Paul Lewis, NZ Herald on 16 Nov 2008
Paul Lewis writes in the NZ Herald on Sunday:

Bruno Trouble once again has a smile playing around his lips. Louis Vuitton are back in the 'America's Cup world', as he calls it, and the best field of match-racing skippers seen since the Cup regatta in 2003 is set to take off in the Louis Vuitton Pacific Series in Auckland in the new year.

Not even his doubts over two of the 12 entrants - Greek Challenge and Team Germany - actually making it to the start line are putting the ebullient Trouble off his stroke. Even with a highly costs-reduced regatta such as the LVPS, it will still cost most syndicates about $1 million to make the trip here and Trouble says the economic crisis is biting deep.

In Valencia, back in July 2007, the urbane and personable Trouble cut a much changed figure from previous years.

Perhaps the person most consistently associated with the modern America's Cup, Trouble used to run the enormous media operations at the Cup regattas and the Louis Vuitton Cup was the longest-running title sponsorship in the history of sport (25 years).

In Valencia, as Vuitton's running battles worsened with Alinghi's administration arm, America's Cup Management (ACM), Trouble increasingly appeared a marginalised figure, often found slumped rather resignedly in the media centre; its operation subsumed by ACM.

In the end, the inevitable happened. 'We [Vuitton] left the America's Cup because of the relationship with ACM - they were too commercial, too interested in money and the budget for 2007 was 10 times what it had been for the regatta here in New Zealand in 2003 [400m euro as opposed 40 million],' he says.

'We were not getting 10 times the return on investment. Valencia was a big local success and you will read stories about the millions of Spanish people who went there - but they went there to lick ice cream and look at the facilities. They were not really interested in the regatta.'

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