America's Cup - Hamish Ross debates Alinghi's line

by Richard Gladwell, nzeditor@sail-world.com on 30 Oct 2007 After a weekend of Challenger Meetings, some behind the scenes negotiations, and several radio interviews, and even a plea from a hospital bed, in South Africa, it seems that the respective parties are still at loggerheads in the 33 America’s Cup.

The lack of progress in negotiations has reached the point of becoming embarrassing, and the focus of the arguments increasingly diluted.

As one party told Sail-World over the weekend 'it sounds like two old ladies arguing over who spilt the soup!'

A so-called compromise plan put forward by BMW Oracle Racing is said to have been scuppered by Alinghi, while the entered Challengers discussed draft twenty something of the new 90ft class rule.

As the clock continued to run down, the prospect of the America’s Cup moving to a new date became increasingly real, as did the prospect of Justice Herman Cahn being to one to break the deadlock.

Many of the protagonists are in New Zealand, among them Brad Butterworth and Hamish Ross (Alinghi) and Jim Farmer (ETNZ). The rest are in Europe – and 12 hour time zones don’t aid a negotiation process.

On the mid-afternoon on Friday, Golden Gate YC put out a media statement which read

'The Golden Gate Yacht Club will agree to comprehensive new compromises to get the America’s Cup back on track for Valencia in 2009 if the defender will disclose its rule for the boats’ design.

'We are looking forward to putting this dispute about the rules behind us and racing for the America’s Cup in 2009 in Valencia as planned. That’s what we want, and that’s what all the challengers want,' Larry Ellison, syndicate head of the club’s America’s Cup team, BMW ORACLE Racing, said today.

'But it is impossible to accept a design rule that we have never seen.'

The American team has told challengers it is ready to agree to wide ranging new proposals discussed over the last 24 hours if it can confirm for itself that the design rule developed by Alinghi is fair for all competitors.

It has been normal practice over recent Cups for the design rule to be seen by all potential competitors well in advance of entries closing for the event. To be fair, while the new Rule has had input only from entered teams, entries have not yet closed.

Much has been made of the so-called shift in position by BMW Oracle Racing with the submission of a nine point plan (or set of requests) by CEO and skipper, Russell Coutts

Yesterday, Sail-World contacted Hamish Ross, General Counsel for Alinghi for an update on their position and their perspective on the general state of play.

On the status of the so-called Nine Point Plan, Ross commented:

'The plan is still under discussion. Calling it a plan is probably not quite right, there are nine points they wanted satisfied before they would progress things further. It is fair to say we are still communicating although not with any huge degree of urgency. '

We the queried Ross on what the Alinghi response was to the 'wide ranging new proposals' which were spoken of in the GGYC statement.

'I guess our response to that [the note] is I guess we are still waiting to see what those wide ranging changes are,' replied Ross.

'So you haven’t seen the note from BMW Oracle Racing?'

'We’ve been copied on correspondence between BMW and the challengers,' replied Ross. 'We know what the nine points are and we have discussed the nine points. We are still waiting to hear what the significant move that was mentioned in Larry’s press release.'

Responding to the question that there had been comment that four or five of the points had been agreed to by Alinghi and ACM, Ross said:

'Some of the points were already agreed, such as letting them in the competition, once they dropped their lawsuit, and aiming to have the event in 2009. That was dealt with and made public some time ago. In reality of that list we are probably down to three or four points that need to be resolved.'

Significant players excluded
'Why have you taken the view that BMW Oracle and others should not be allowed into the discussions on rule development which has been done with previous iterations', we asked?

'That is quite false', Ross points out quickly. 'In fact, last time revised the class rule quite substantially, it was between us and the Challenger of Record. No other challenger was involved. This time we’ve extended it to those who have entered into the competition to have some input into that. We see no reason why we should extend it to third parties who haven’t made a commitment to the next Cup.

We put to Ross that in post 1988, when the transition was made from the 12 Metre class to what became the IAC Class that all groups who had either been past challengers in 1987 or prospective Challengers for 1992 were allowed to participate in the development of the new class rule. And then a 60 day window was opened for those who wanted to compete to enter.

Ross replied: 'I think what happened is that it was done by several designers, and their work was picked up and agreed to by the San Diego Yacht Club.

'In those days, and prior to that, this whole concept of mutual consent was a one sided process. In reality, the defender decided where the next cup was going to be, 'please enter if you wish to do so, and off we go'.

(This was the model used by New York Yacht Club, who opened the challenge window by issuing a statement before the current Match was complete (but the result looked inevitable) announcing the terms of an acceptable challenge, accepted valid challengers and then selected one to be the Challenger of Record who then organised the Challenger Selection Series - which became the Louis Vuitton Cup).

Ross continued 'The Challenger of Record didn’t play a huge role in that, except that the challengers were left to organise the challenger series as they saw fit. The difference here (33AC) is that we do have a lot more input and negotiation not only with the challenger record but also the other challengers as well. '

We put it to Ross that with three or four key players not involved in the rule development process that is not really going to help the short to medium future of the America’s Cup game.

'Our problem is that we may never agree with them', Ross commented. 'The class rule may be compromised to get their agreement and they never enter. Our view is that unless a team has made a commitment to enter they are not involved in the rule making process. If they enter they are immediately involved in the process. That is a policy decision we made some time ago. '

'That is all very well,' we point out. 'But in entering there are some other quite stringent requirements that must be complied with, which are nothing to do with the design rule.'

Ross agrees, but counters 'Yes and part of entering is making a commitment that you’re not going to go running off to Court. We have invited them in an attempt to resolve issues that they have. We have a problem renegotiating a deal that was negotiated with the Spanish. They don’t accept that, but it was negotiated.

'I believe that if you ask any other entered challengers they are more than happy with the process. The fundamental problem is the Defender is being accused of things that might happen or could happen, rather than things that have happened. I think that is a huge difference. '

Cost control a driving factor
Given the success of the 32nd America’s Cup, many ask why was it not possible to just pick up the Protocol for that event, change the dates for a month later, as has been done, and get on with it, we ask?

'A number of people wanted to make changes that they saw as improvements,' Ross explains. 'One of the big changes was cost cutting. We really wanted to bring that