America's Cup- Sir Keith Mills reflects on the TeamOrigin withdrawal

by Richard Gladwell on 3 Oct 2010
British America's Cup team principal, Sir Keith Mills had given an extensive interview with Yachting World's Matthew Sheahan covering the reason behind the cessation of action to Challenge for the 34th America's Cup.

Entries open for the event on 1 November 2010 closing in the first quarter of 2011. TeamOrigin was formed after the 32nd America's Cup and was a leading participant amongst challenger ranks for a Multi-Challenger, Swiss style event to the point of acquiring a boat from the Swiss team Alinghi.

TeamOrigin also engaged several key staff including a Team Director. Mike Sanderson, and designer Juan Kouyoumdjian. Both relationships were terminated earlier this year, with Sanderson, a winning Volvo Round the World racer and America's Cup veteran being replaced by Grant Simmer, design director of Alinghi. Others from the Alinghi design team, twice winners of the America's Cup, were expected to be bought across to the British America's Cup team.

Team Origin was the only team to launch a new yacht for the 2010 Audi MedCup circuit, currently the world's hottest monohull circuit and after some initial ups and downs setting down to perform creditably, given that all teams have some very poor races in this event.

They competed in many of the Louis Vuitton Trophy events in the America's Cup class, and again showed flashes of form expected from any new team, coupled with some significant errors, which had major impacts on their results.

Competing on the World Match Racing Tour, the team particularly its skipper, triple gold medalist, Ben Ainslie, again scored some very good results in many regattas. And similarly so with their foray's into the Extreme 40 catamaran circuit.

The area of difficulty for the team has always been to step up into the big boats, with their golden afterguard of Olympic Gold medalists, and their dual focus on the 2012 Olympic regatta plus the 33rd and then 34th America's Cup. Many teams overcome this gap with the use of sailors in key positions who have done the miles in the Volvo Ocean Race, or have done the build up as a team doing the day in day out grind of an America's Cup campaign.

While the helmsman, Ben Ainslie and tactician Iain Percy did the miles in the buildup for the 32nd America's Cup, albeit for different teams. (Ainslie as backup helmsman in Emirates Team NZ, and Percy in the low-budget Plus 39 campaign.) The fact is that as a team they did not yet really have the hard edge provided by sailing together over a very a long period time.

With the option of an America's Cup in 2014 in monohulls, and the Olympics in 2012, it would have been possible for the team to both run an America's Cup campaign and compete in their home Olympics.

That would have given the team the two-year, albeit it still tight, build up time essential to perform very creditably in an America's Cup regatta, and get the chemistry completely right in a team, whose afterguard got on very well together and really did have that Magic 'X factor that so many of the multi-national team lack. That chemistry, had it been allowed to properly work its way into an America's Cup campaign, would have got the British team through a lot of difficult days.

The killer blows to that scheme were the shortening of the date for the 34th America's Cup to 2013, the switch to wingsailed catamarans, and the requirement to compete in a range of 13 regattas in the buildup to the 34th America's Cup or forfeit both performance bonds and the right of entry to the Challenger Selection series.

Far from being a straw team, TeamOrigin does have some very good people in place, good inventory in terms of boats and gear and has a base in Valencia. While some may be critical of the team and what it tried to achieve, TeamOrigin had the potential to be a very potent force in a 2014 America's Cup sailed in monohulls, in a conventional Cup buildup, and were well down the track to achieve this success.

Against that backdrop, Sir Keith Mills talks to Yachting World's Matthew Sheahan:

'The only reason I put the team together at the start was to have a chance of winning and I think the odds are staked very heavily against any challenger. More heavily than they have been for some time in the America's Cup.'

'At the end of the day I had to take the decision on whether I thought the Challenge was viable. Because of the timetable, I had to make that decision very quickly because if we were going to have a chance, we had to start designing our boat right now. We have spent the last 3-4 weeks since getting the Protocol talking to other potential Challengers and the Defender, talking to designers, commercial partners as well as trawling through the details and looking at the racing format. It really wasn't one issue that was the problem, it was a combination of issues that caused real concern when you lined them all up.

'I didn't like the class rule, I think that it has some serious issues with it. For instance, I don't know how you race something like that in 33 knots of wind. When we asked Oracle about that they really didn't have an answer. I don't know how you moor it up, or stick it on the dock and they don't have answers for that either.

'So I had real concerns about the boat as well as the fact that there are very few sailors around the world that have sailed such boats and very few designers that have designed 40m wings. From our starting point the class has real viability question marks over it.

'Having looked at the 2013 timetable and planned it in enormous detail, we concluded that there really is no time at all to design two multihulls and learn how to race them. It's OK if you're Oracle and two months ahead, but if you're a mere mortal, that's a big challenge.

'When you look at the commercial aspects, the costs are around 20 percent more than those of AC32 in Valencia, but the cycle is over three years and not four. The result is that you have to raise 20 percent more money in 25 percent less time. In effect you only have two years of commercial rights to sell.

'The designers that were invited by BMW Oracle in May to discuss the future of the class concluded that it you wanted a lot of good teams with close racing then modern fast monohulls were the way to go. There are a lot of very good sailors and designers that could produce a very good competition. We've got now a competition where very few sailors have sailed it, very few designers have designed one and the cost in producing it is prohibitive.'

'I built the team around Ben, Iain and Andrew, I think they are three outstanding sailors. Ben will, I'm sure, one day win the America's Cup. They were all up for learning how to race 72ft catamarans, but I wouldn't have gone out and recruited a French multihull specialist to bring to the team, that was never in my thinking.

To finish the long interview, (which can be http://www.yachtingworld.com/performance-world/news/501745/why-teamorigin-is-out!read_here ) Sheahan asked Mills if he had been put off the America's Cup for good.

'No, I'd never say never, but I'm extremely frustrated to have reached this position. Throughout three and a half years of frustration through the law suit I stuck in there, kept the team together and kept spending money because I was determined to make it work. But there comes a time in sport and in business where you need to sit back and take a long look at what's being served up. If it's not working then you have to take the decision. I've had to do it in business a few times and now I've had to do it in an America's Cup team.'

In the grand scheme of the 34th America's Cup, TeamOrigin's decision to pull back, is significant loss for the America's Cup family and fans. TeamOrigin provided a unique bridge between the Olympics and the America's Cup, and their golden afterguard, from the most successful Olympic sailing nation provided a unique benchmark for other teams, fans and commentators.

That benchmark, of five (and maybe more) Olympic Gold medals in the afterguard carries a lot of credibility in many circles, and respect. And the 34th America's Cup is poorer for its loss.

If TeamOrigin think in the medium to long term, they will stay in business. The 35th America's Cup is likely for 2016. That also clashes with the Olympics in that year, so there maybe some slip and slide. However the telling factor, will be that the chances are high that one, or both of the Star and Finn will be dropped from the 2016 Olympics.

That will be the time for the still young, TeamOrigin afterguard to make the switch to full time America's Cup campaigning and try to pull over 160 years of history back to its starting point.

To read the full interview in Yachting World www.yachtingworld.com/performance-world/news/501745/why-teamorigin-is-out!click_here