Alinghi, TNZ Set Collision Course

It's a small country and people will talk, but few sportsmen have gone from hero to pariah so quickly as did Russell Coutts when he defected from New Zealand to Switzerland's Alinghi Challenge for the America's Cup.

He did it largely for the same reason many (most?) of the country's college graduates choose to leave that wonderful little country for employment overseas: better pay. Coutts has tried to keep cool and duck all the barbs and snubs up to now, but Team New Zealand's latest caper pushed him over the edge.

In an interview with Helen Tunnah of the New Zealand Herald he sharply criticized the defenders for claiming the Protocol prohibited the challengers from switching boats between the Louis Vuitton Cup semifinals and finals.

"The Team New Zealand I was involved in generally tried to steer clear of these rules challenges," Coutts said. "The new Team New Zealand seems to have adopted a different approach."

Sir Peter Blake, who led those TNZ teams, is no longer around to comment. He was murdered by river pirates in Brazil a year ago.

But Coutts said he remembered Sir Peter "giving some speeches to the team [at San Diego in 1995] that said, 'We're going to stay out of all these issues, we're not going to be a litigious challenger and we're going to try and win this event on the water through designing boats better and sailing better.'"

OneWorld Challenge chief executive Gary Wright also spoke recently of the "honorable" days under Sir Peter's leadership and that that Team New Zealand was not the syndicate of today.

The broadsides coincide with revelations that the Swiss are testing their version of the revolutionary fixed appendage hidden under TNZ's skirts. The concept involves a partial false hull which can add waterline length and boost speed.

More to the point, the rhetoric appears to put Alinghi and TNZ on a collision course for February. It would be quite a match.

Bertelli a Mellow Fellow

There was the night during the challenger trials three years ago when an exasperated Patrizio Bertelli personally and publicly blasted the incompetence of his own Prada team in a special press release following a frustrating day of racing. His tirade may have boosted the Italians into the LVC finals and the match against Team New Zealand.

This time he fired lead designer Doug Peterson after one race and seemed to be running the whole campaign with a hidden but heavy hand. But on the night Prada was eliminated, the volatile Bertelli was downright mellow, at least in a statement issued by his PR people.

"I am sorry that this time around our progress in the America's Cup Challenge stopped short before the Louis Vuitton Cup finals," he said. "I am particularly sorry for the team who, as always, has given everything it had and has proven to be among the best in the world.

"We realized early on this year that our boats were not as competitive as those of the other current semifinalist teams. I want to point out, though, how well the team was able to bounce back, working day and night, to modify and improve the boats."

Bertelli did criticize the narrow wind window the challengers gave themselves that cost them 17 out of 49 scheduled racing days.

"I think that in the future the rules should allow for greater flexibility in the race calendar in order to allow better use of the weather conditions during the whole span of the day," he said. "Often we have seen whole days lost when a simple change to an earlier start would have allowed the competitors to race."

Francesco: the Lousy Weather Didn't Help

Bertelli's skipper, Francesco de Angelis, is a perfect gentleman, one of the nicest people around the event and now a truly sympathetic figure.

"We left the dock this morning hoping to race two matches today and to even our score," he said, sadly. "As the day wore on and we just sat there waiting for the wind we began to feel that we were not in control of our destiny any longer."

Prada needed to win two races Monday to pull even with OneWorld and perpetuate the series.

"It was certainly a pity that we could not really complete a best-of-seven series," de Angelis said. "Certainly, the four days over the last 10 that were lost to adverse weather conditions were also a serious drawback.

"On a personal note I'd like to thank Patrizio Bertelli for the opportunity he gave me to be part of this campaign."

At the evening's press conference de Angelis flicked a tear from one eye and tried to answer questions.

"What could we have done better?" he pondered. "At the moment I don’t know."

It Didn't Matter Who Was Starting

The change wasn't on the Prada's crew list issued to media Monday morning, but B-boat driver Gavin Brady took the place of Rod Davis as starting helmsman.

Asked about the late switch, de Angelis said, "That was a contingency decision that was made in the sense that we wanted to throw something new at OneWorld. It's something that other teams have done."

It didn't make much difference. With the massive wind shifts, the starting line was so skewed that Prada couldn't lay it on starboard tack and got away 16 seconds behind, then won by 17:46---the largest margin of any race so far.

Bittersweet Day for OneWorld

The OneWorld crew wore black armbands for the meaningless last race against Prada in tribute to co-owner Craig McCaw's younger brother Keith, who died Sunday.

Team official Gary Wright said, "He was a great friend to many of us on the team and a great supporter, too. It’s a very sad day for us. We carried Keith's name on the boom today."

Spithill: Will This Be His Day In the Sun?

James Spithill, OneWorld's 23-year-old helmsman, has been overshadowed so far not only by the fame of Coutts, Chris Dickson and de Angelis but by the financial and then the legal issues that have dogged the team for more than a year. He actually made his AC debut three years ago as skipper of Syd Fischer's shoestring Young Australia campaign and had some good moments with old sails on an old boat.

Now, in the semifinals repechage series starting Thursday (Friday in N.Z.) against Oracle BMW, may be his chance to shine.

"It’s obvious that there has been a lot going on here in the media," Spithill said at Monday's press conference. "We could have easily got sidetracked, but the guys just kept it tight and its great to come out of this on top with all that has been going on."

Q: "Will you be ready to race on Friday morning?"

Spithill: "We’ll be as ready as we can be. The weather doesn’t look too good over the next couple of days, but we’ll do our best and we are really looking forward to racing Oracle.

Q: "Do you think you got some extra push from the penalty?"

Spithill: "Yes, definitely, with what’s been going on with the one-point deduction, it just drives you even harder to go out and win. You channel all that energy on the water."