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22 Jun 2017 |
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  Crunch time in Bermuda
 | | 2017 America's Cup Finals - Day 2 Ingrid Abery |
Think back to AC33 – Boracle vs The Beast. Jimmy Spithill arced in to the start line, 50' up in the air and flying two hulls, and it just looked as if it was all over. The Swiss, famous manufacturers of very expensive watches, were late for the start. And afterwards at the press conference, when asked “What are you going to do tomorrow?” Brad Butterworth replied, “Well, they are sailing higher and faster than us. What do you want me to say?”
Some of us (many of us) were cheering for Larry Ellison who seemed to be the White Knight to Ernesto Bertarelli's Dark Lord. Bertarelli, you will remember, won the AC under the aegis of a Swiss yacht club (Societé Nautique de Genève) that palpably did not have “an annual regatta on the sea or an arm of the sea” and by some accounts should never have been in the America's Cup at all.
Then Larry and his henchmen set about trying to turn the AC into ‘F1 on Water' with super-fast foiling catamarans and a World Series that took thrills, spills and adrenaline to the great non-sailing public - turning what had previously been a quirky waterborne perversion for millionaires into a circus spectacle that had to be explained to the audience. Bruno Troublé of Louis Vuitton called it an event 'smelling of french fries and sunscreen.' Not classy.
It became even more weird when the Defender started dialling themselves into the Challenger Series, and even taking an advantage point away from an event they should never have contested in the first place. And now it's down to the short strokes: in a first-to-7-points match for the 35th America's Cup, after four races Emirates Team New Zealand, the scrappy-dappy-doos from somewhere most Americans can't even find on a map, are faced off 3-0 (official score) after fiour races, against Oracle Team USA (or AUS if you prefer – they have 5.5 Aussies and half an American in a 6-man crew).
 | | 2017 America's Cup Finals - Day 2 Ingrid Abery |
By all accounts so far, Bermuda has not been the howling commercial success that America's Cup Event Management (and the Bermuda Government) hoped for. Event merchandise was being sold at 30% off before the main event had even started, the hotels have reported substantially less than full occupancy, and one look at the drone shots of the AC village down at the old Royal Dockyard will tell you that the place is not exactly heaving. There are lesser numbers of visiting superyachts than expected, and a substantially fewer spectator boats out on the Great Sound than there were for the ACWS event in October 2015. The little piece of daily theatre known as the ‘dock-out' - when the sailors passed through a gauntlet of adoring fans en route to the boats - has been cancelled... maybe because everyone was waving NZ flags and there were precious few Oracle supporters in sight. It always struck us that when Jimmy Spithill talked about ‘home waters' and a ‘home crowd', he was referring to a country which has a Union Flag on its standard, just like New Zealand.
More racing coming up this weekend: potentially, this whole thing could be over by the end of Sunday. New Zealand are not part of the Gang of Five cartel that made some fairly sweeping decisions about the immediate future and format of the AC. If ETNZ win the 35th America's Cup, expect some substantial changes from the current protocol.
In a radio commentary after the second day's racing, Brad Butterworth said, “ETNZ are higher and faster upwind, and lower downwind.” Does this sound familiar?
Standing by on 72.
Guy Nowell, Asia Editor
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