America's Cup: Dalton heads for Europe to check short-listed AC37 venues
by Richard Gladwell/Sail-World.com/nz 4 Mar 2022 19:37 AEDT
4 March 2022
Cork, Ireland offers three course locations suitable for America's Cup racing © Little Island Business Association
With the New Zealand borders opening, without restriction, on Friday, to returning Kiwi passport holders from all countries, Emirates Team New Zealand and America's Cup Event Ltd joint-CEO Grant Dalton is leaving New Zealand to visit the short-listed venues for the 37th America's Cup.
New Zealand's borders have effectively been closed for barrier-free re-entry since March 2020, when New Zealand was put into its first Covid lockdown. All cross-border movements involved 14 days minimum in quarantine.
The demand for Quarantine places was usually ten times the available capacity, and travelling without a quarantine booking was a recipe for being marooned overseas for several months.
As a result, ETNZ has had to rely on UK based Origin Sports to work through the long list of 35 venues, which responded to the initial request for information distributed in November 2020. Origin Sports are believed to have conducted their own site visits as part of the short-list evaluation process.
While the America's Cup holders have not released a short-short list of venues, it is said to cover three sites - Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; Cork, Ireland and Malaga, Spain. Two venues have dropped out of contention, Valencia, Spain - which was excused from further consideration earlier this year, and Barcelona, Spain.
Despite an 11th-hour media campaign by the Kiwi Home Defence Group, they appear to have gained no real traction with the team or the club, Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron. A significant financial gap exists between the NZD$200million (E124million) required to run the Defence team and Event and the Kiwi Home Defence backers have offered, along with the NZ Govt's original $31million hosting fee offer.
Through their Major Events arm, the NZ Government offered NZD$9million less for a Hosting Fee than they contributed to the 36th America's Cup. That offer, combined with negative media leaks during the three-month exclusive negotiation process and other issues, sent the clear signal that the NZ Govt and Auckland Council were not seriously interested in hosting AC37. Instead, they preferred the entitled view that ETNZ was obliged to defend on its home waters.
Malaga, Spain, was earlier rejected for funding assistance by the Spanish Government. However, its bid is centred around developing a new marina funded by sources in Qatar - and that option is not believed to hinge on the provision of funding from the central or regional Spanish Government sources.
None of the three venues has custom-built America's Cup facilities, as do three of the four previous hosts, Auckland, Bermuda and Valencia.
Part of Dalton's venue visits will be to gauge the construction and organisational/logistics work required, within the time left, given that teams can start sailing in six months on September 17 and are expected to be at the venue 12 months before the America's Cup, scheduled for June 2024.
Dalton is also expected to assess the impact of last week's Russian invasion of Ukraine on the 37th America's Cup. However, with the event still two years distant, it is too soon to call whether the Match will proceed as planned, be delayed, or be transferred out of Europe.
No Russian oligarchs are believed to be involved in the venues or funding of the teams.
Dalton is expected to have face to face meetings with the Challenger of Record, the other three challenger teams who have entered so far, and any prospective teams. He is also expected to liaise with existing event and ETNZ team sponsors and broadcasters.
Emirates Team New Zealand have several projects under way outside the venue selection exercise.
As well as doing design work for their AC75, the AC40 Youth, Women's and Development boat is also under way. Construction of the eight boats is being undertaken by McConaghy Boats in China.. ETNZ's Richard Meacham leads that project. The third project speed record attempt to exceed 109.5kts by a land yacht is led by Glenn Ashby. A fourth project, developing a foiling hydrogen-powered chase boat, is close to launching a prototype.
The team has previously announced their core sailing team, many of who are involved in the Final of the SailGP season 2, which will be sailed in San Francisco in late March for a USD$1million winner-take-all purse.