Sail-World.com : TeamOrigin takes issue with role of America's Cup Challenger

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Sail-World.com : TeamOrigin takes issue with role of America's Cup Challenger

TeamOrigin takes issue with role of America's Cup Challenger

'Grant Simmer, the new head of TeamOrigin' Ian Roman/TEAMORIGIN

Increasing disquiet in the established America's Cup community over the 34th America's Cup surfaced in an interview with the British America's Cup team, Team Origin, now directed by former Alinghi design boss, Grant Simmer (AUS).

In the published in TheDailySail.com Simmer and team boss, Sir Keith Mills say they are not happy with the lack of response and role of the Challenger, Club Nautico di Roma in the 'consultation' process.

TheDailySail reports that: 'The main issue it seems is the invisibility of the Challenger of Record, the Club Nautico di Roma and their team Mascalzone Latino. Since the press conference in Rome on 6 May, Mascalzone Latino Team Principle Vincenzo Onorato has been decidedly below the radar and there has been little sense that the Challenger of Record has been performing their function of keeping the Defender in check via the ‘mutual consent’ process we heard so much about prior to the 33rd America’s Cup. In fact there are startling similarities between the 'silent partner' role the Club Nautico di Roma appears to be playing at present in the design of the 34th America’s Cup to that of the CNEV in the build-up with Alinghi to the 33nd.

As Sir Keith Mills puts it: 'We have tried to contact them [Mascalzone Latino] on a number of occasions and had no response. They are not interested in talking to anyone.'

TeamOrigin has written to Onorato and proposed a group of challengers take on the responsibility of Challenger of Record as a group, like the Challenger Commissions that have been formed prior to all the America’s Cups since 1995. 'We’re asking for that so that it is the challengers acting as a group together. We won’t always agree, but they never have in the past and you get strong and weak challengers and that is part of it, but as a group we go and say to the defender ‘we want to do this’,' says TeamOrigin CEO Grant Simmer.

Simmer continues: 'Maybe when we know more about the event, that is going to happen. We are hopeful. We are asking for that and other challengers are as well, but ultimately it is Vincenzo’s decision whether he wants to do that. Certainly it is easier for them if they want to get a lot of stuff done quickly to do it with one party. Maybe they want to define the event together in a much smaller group and then any changes in the future will be agreed as a group of challengers. We’d be happy with that.'

The interview continues at length and continues on the theme that most of the Challengers, particularly the established teams are set up for monohull campaigns, often running multi event programs and to switch to an America's Cup event sailed in multihulls would cause them a serious rethink about even entering the event.

While many touch on the perceived advantage that BMW Oracle as Defender may have in multihulls, that ignores the fact that many of the leading lights in the BMW Oracle design and racing team were from a monohull background, and were able to make the switch over a few months from the French who initially were integral to the Deed of Gift campaign.

The major points of concern seem to be the obsoleting of existing monohull inventory, coupled with a lack of programmed events for 2011 and 2012 given that the multihull option seems to be advanced as much, or more so than the monohull option.

Under the 19th century Deed of Gift it is the Challenger's role to determine the boat that will be sailed. It has never been publicly revealed just which yacht the Rome based yacht club stated in the Notice of Challenge, and it is that club's apparent lack of communication with the wider challenger group that seems to have prompted the comments from the TeamOrigin group.

by Richard Gladwell

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12:19 AM Fri 30 Jul 2010 GMT

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