Rich Roberts Reports
| Cayard: the America's Cup, Volvo, Antarctica -- and Star Sailing By Rich Roberts
Competition for America's Cup XXXI starts in 2½ months with the Louis Vuitton Cup challenger trials at Auckland, where some of the familiar major players will be Russell Coutts, Dennis Conner, Peter Gilmour and . . . Paul Cayard? "I don't have any plan to go to Auckland," Cayard said. Not as a sailor, certainly. Perhaps, with his insight and charisma, as a TV commentator? "I have been contacted by Outdoor Life [Network]," Cayard said, referring to the group that has TV rights for the U.S. "I don't know if I really want to do that, and if I did I would have to run it by Oracle [now Oracle BMW]." Cayard, at home in the San Francisco suburb of Kentfield, can't make a professional move without Larry Ellison's permission. He remains under contract, in limbo, through the duration of this AC next February. He has enjoyed his time at home with wife Icka and two kids. He sailed a leg of the Volvo Ocean Race with Amer Sports One. In another way he has come full circle, back to sailing Star boats and calling tactics for rich guys on Farr 40s, as he once did for his late mentor Tom Blackaller at Fremantle in 1986-87. Cayard, who won the Star Worlds with Steve Erickson as crew in 1988, will be sailing at Marina del Rey, Calif., with "Hollywood" Hal Haenel as crew, in this weekend's 5th District championships, followed by the California YC's King of Spain regatta Aug. 10-11---tune-ups for the Nautica Star Worlds Aug. 18-23. Ellison still hasn't explained why, in his wisdom, he bumped one of the world's most successful sailors from his sailing team last October. But, apparently, Ellison has enough regard for Cayard's abilities---Whitbread winner, participant in the last six ACs, two as the leader, and still in his prime at 43---to freeze him in an administrative position and prevent him from joining a rival American team. "I know it's just an issue with one person," Cayard said. "I don't feel like I was removed for any type of inferior performance. In fact, it might have been the contrary. I'm pretty confident in myself and I've had plenty of positive feedback on my performance [from] within Oracle." There have been upsides, other than a continuing steady income. "The best part about not being there is being home with family all the time and not having the strains on my relationship with my wife and kids that the America's Cup adds," Cayard said. "I'm enjoying sailing the Stars [and] the Farr 40s. I'm playing a different side of the sport. But I'm also missing the big project and what the America's Cup is. I guess I'm waiting to see what it's gonna be like in December or January, not being part of the main event." Q: Beyond the Star Worlds, what's on your horizon? PC: "There's always the next America's Cup, and I have a few people contacting me about that. I have some thoughts about some of the offshore sailing---the Antarctica Cup and the Volvo [Ocean Race]---to try to improve both the competitiveness and the interest factor for the competitors themselves, at the same time producing a more valuable product for the corporate sponsors." Q: Why did you enter the Antarctica Cup? PC: "I think it's a fantastic idea, very creative. The one-design boat is a good idea because it makes all the teams competitive and reduces costs. You can even square that again if they can use the same boats in the Volvo. Then those boats would have some residual value. "I'm interested in trying to make this happen, whether I participate, but I would like to see the Antarctica Cup people and the Volvo people and anybody who has interest in the large monohull, crewed, around-the-world type sailing work together to make it a more viable business activity." Q: Should other professional offshore events offer prize money, as the Antarctica Cup proposes to do? PC: "It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that in the Antarctica Cup the competitors are putting up the prize money [with million-dollar entry fees]. Even if that's the way it is, it's good marketing and it adds more interest. It's sort of like betting on yourself. Everybody has some skin in the game. As the events grow in prestige, we should be able to cover the prize money in other ways. "What's out of balance in professional sailing is that the value given is inferior to the cost. If we didn't have Larry Ellison's passion and [Craig] McCaw's passion and [Ernesto] Bertarelli's passion, you wouldn't have $80 million dollar America's Cup teams. It doesn't make corporate financial sense. "We need to grow these events so they do . . . make them more competitive, get more countries involved, have the races close, try to have residual value for our assets, try to make the tools that we use to put the show on not cost more than what they need to. Do we need $10 million boats to put on good racing? Probably not. "I see the Antarctica Cup and the Volvo with a chance to put in place a very good business model. The first segment of the sport that does will be a hit because there are a lot of people who are now used to being professional sailors and want to continue that lifestyle and career who are going to go to the first viable business that surfaces. I've talked to Russell Coutts about this and we're on the same page." Q: Your thoughts on changes proposed for the Volvo Ocean Race? PC: "A little bit bigger boats . . . one-design boats. But [the Volvo 60s] happen to be great tools for the job. They're safe, relatively fast and don't require a lot of crew. The problem with going too big is getting too much crew. That's expensive. If they went with those boats again I'd cut the crews from 12 to 10. I'd cut the sails. Instead of 17 sails on the boat we probably should have 12. "It's a hassle to have them there. It's somewhat dangerous because they're all stacked on one side and if you have an emergency and have to turn around, you have to unstack the sails before you can go back and rescue somebody." Q: What else? PC: "Fewer stops. Probably what Volvo is going to have to do is put on a little more show in the ports. They might want to do five stops and in every port have five races---just fleet racing." Q: Which five stops? PC: "You pretty much have to stop in South Africa somewhere, but Cape Town is not a big commercial center. Sydney has all the potential in the world. [The 2001-02 competitors] felt like they were lost there, but get the right marketing group to help and you could put on a great show in Sydney Harbour. Auckland, mmm . . . is not necessary. It's a small market, but there's tradition." Q: And a fourth of the sailors are from there. PC: "Yeah, yeah. Then Rio [or] maybe Buenos Aires. It's tough because the best commercial spots are in North America and Europe. Baltimore is the winner in the United States, so you forget Miami, and then France is good---La Rochelle. I didn't follow the end of the race but I guess Gothenburg was huge, and the finish [at Kiel] was good, so maybe we're gonna be able to cut out only one or two stops. You just make it a little faster." Q: Volvo also is interested in Japan. PC: "That would be great if you could get there. It's a tough route. I was thinking maybe there's some way you could race [from Japan] to the Panama Canal and cut out all of South America, but there's something fundamental about rounding Cape Horn as part of a round-the-world race. "It wouldn't be hard, prior to the Antarctica Cup, to do a race up to Japan and back. If you can use these same boats and have a large fleet, you can create a circuit to touch all the key markets and still have the round-the-world theme." Q: Back to the AC---what about the rows going on? PC: "I'm on our internal rules committee at Oracle. We had a conference call yesterday and, as you can imagine, we're involved in a few of these little episodes. I was thinking to myself as everybody was quite seriously discussing the issues that [the issues] are so ridiculous and petty and such a sideshow to the sailing. "But there are rules and the rules exist for this phase of the game. Later in the game people will be arguing about sail measurement or boat measurement or umpire calls, but we're not sailing now. It's part of the game." Q: How would you rank the challengers? PC: "[Switzerland's] Alinghi [led by Coutts] is gonna be tough because they have the most solid sailing team that's been through the most battles together, [along with] a number of AmericaOne guys that are there. The big question mark for them is what are they gonna get for their boat? The Auckland venue will help them because it's a very tricky venue, not just a one-way racetrack. There is opportunity for good tactics, good starts, good match racing skills to make up for a slight deficit in boat speed. "Stars & Stripes next. They have two boats. [Reichel/Pugh] is going to do a good job for them on the boats. They have a good sailing team and have succeeded in remaining out of the fray of who appear to be the big dogs. That's going to play out well for them. Some people are not rating them just because they don't have $80 million, but that might be a mistake. "Prada should be there, but Prada has a huge problem on its hands with this lawsuit [for suing Oracle over its "spy" barge]. It's gonna take some serious bending of the rules to let 'em off the hook. It is one of the few infringements in the [America's Cup] Protocol where the penalty is very precisely described." Q: Disqualification? PC: "Right. It doesn't matter if you're completely right. It says 'if you sue.' This is going to consume a lot of their energy. It may actually finish them off. It depends on how strong a backbone the Arbitration Panel and Team New Zealand want to have on this issue. "[Seattle's] One World has been living under a mountain of problems for a long time. Their boats [designed by Laurie Davidson] should be good, but I'm not as convinced as I am of Oracle's boats. "The Brits could surprise some people. They're a young, clean, fresh team without a lot of baggage and egos of the top people. They're missing some experience and America's Cup worldliness, but there's no pressure on them." "The French and [Italy's Mascalzone Latino] are underfunded or late---not really playing to win. Sweden is playing to win, but I just have a gut feel that they would come in behind the Brits." (Note: Cayard declined to include Oracle BMW in his rankings.) Q: Meanwhile, how serious is your Star sailing? PC: "When I got my new boat, after Oracle sidelined me, I started sailing with Phil Trinter largely because he's the guy I want to do the Olympic campaign with. We had a great spring, getting second at Bacardi Cup and first at the [Western Hemisphere] Springs, but he is unavailable for the worlds because of preparations for the America's Cup [with Oracle BMW]. "But I love sailing with Hal. He has a gold and silver
medal [with Mark Reynolds]. He's local. I think we're going to make
a really good team for the worlds in L.A." |
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