Sol Trujillo inspires Italian America’s Cup campaign

by Sail-World/Valencia Sailing on 27 May 2009 The Italian America's Cup Team needs to build a giant 90 foot state of the art racing multihull in a very short time and the marine industry doubts it can be done. The Italians says it can be and recently departed Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo is their inspiration.

Italian communications industry heavyweight Francesco de Leo, CEO of Green Comm, the Italian team that filed a challenge for the 33rd America's Cup, wanting to race against Swiss Billionare Ernesto Bertarelli who’s Team Alinghi won the Cup and defended it in 2007 and Larry Ellison, the CEO of the US software giant Oracle who is the Challenger of Record campaigning BMW Oracle.

Spain’s America’s Cup website Valencia Sailing.com interviewed de Leo last week. Their first question was : Are you a pawn of Alinghi, used in their quest to buy time in order to better prepare for the inevitable one-on-one race with BMW Oracle?

Francesco de Leo: No, we are absolutely not their pawns. This is a challenge that started with completely different objectives and has its own global agenda. It isn't a coincidence that we are called Green Comm and this has to do with my personal background. Probably your readers don't know it but I won the third mobile phone license in Spain when I was managing director of Telecom Italia.

Valencia Sailing: Is Green Comm's challenge a delaying tactic used by Alinghi?

Francesco de Leo: No. Look, I have no connection whatsoever with Ernesto Bertarelli...

Valencia Sailing: Still, is it a coincidence that the world headquarters of Simtone, the first sponsor you publicly announced, are in Vevey, Switzerland, close to Serono's facilities and the Décision boatyard?

Francesco de Leo: I will tell you everything about Simtone. If you go to the company's website, www.simtone.net, you'll see that I form part of its advisory board. Simtone is the creation of Mario Dal Canto, one of the initial managers of Sun Microsystems, together with founders Scott McNealy and Bill Joy. One of my dearest friends and mentor, Sol Trujillo, CEO of US West, then Orange and now Telstra, was one of Dal Canto's financial backers. I know Mario since a very long time. He's an Italian with a very strong presence in the US and creator of what is probably the world's most powerful cloud computing platform. This technology will also be of use to me for our challenge.

Valencia Sailing: I will interrupt you again, but there is no multihull experience in Italy, unlike France where you have legends such as Franck Cammas, Loïck Peyron or Pascal Bidégorry, just to name a few.

Francesco de Leo: You are absolutely right, but if you go to Google and type 'multihulls' you will have much more information than what I had myself 20 years ago when I was doing my PhD in California. The world has changed and people still don't understand it. They think we are in the 1980's.

If you have the right contacts and the right people, you can build any challenge you want.

Let me give you an example. Sol Trujillo, with whom I'll dine on Friday in Venice, covered the entire Australian territory, 98% of its population with a broadband wireless network in 10 months. You are obviously aware that Australia is as big as Continental Europe.

How did he achieve it? Certainly not by doing the things the usual way in the telecom sector. He reviewed all processes, the roles of each person, saw where time savings could be made and carried out his plan. People now ask me, 'How can you build a catamaran before February?', my answer is simple.

Trujillo covered the entire Australian territory in 10 months and we will not able to build a multihull in 3 months? It depends a lot on your starting point. I come with a different background and a managerial experience. I'm sorry to see people are very surprised but they shouldn't be surprised at all.

Valencia Sailing: Nevertheless, right now we are in what is, or at least was, the base of +39 Challenge, right here in Valencia. There must be some relation.

Valencia Sailing: Let's assume you design a 90ft multihull. This yacht must be built in Italy as per the Deed of Gift. Is there such a knowhow? Where would you build it?

Francesco de Leo: Of course there is the knowhow in Italy. In Italy there are companies like Finnmecanica, Finncantieri or Alenia Spazzio that not only are leaders in aerospace or defense but have also made acquisitions throughout the world. Let's not forget there are boatyards that, starting with the Moro di Venezia, have built a number of America's Cup yachts. We have extraordinary knowhow in carbon fiber and it's only 50km away from my home.

Valencia Sailing: Let's again, hypothetically, assume that BMW Oracle agrees and accepts you challenge. That would mean you would have to race a Challenger Selection Series some time in January. Your time window is even smaller. Would you still have the time to develop realistically something competitive?

Francesco de Leo: It's clear that we are not doing something that is absolutely normal. In fact, the management's mentality is to manage a 'mission impossible'. We know we have until the end of July before we definitely freeze the boat design.

We also know we can accelerate the construction process, within certain limits. We will certainly not have the time we would have wished for to test her in order to optimize her. We will substitute this with the wireless electronic sensors and the sensor networks that will allow us to process data that today we are not even able to collect.

We just have to wait and see what are the decisions taken by others.

To read the complete story go to http://valenciasailing.blogspot.com/