America’s Cup: Davis skeptical about key changes

Emirates Team NZ coach, Rod Davis, admits he is still a bit stunned, three months after the conclusion of the 34th America’s Cup, and the shock loss by the Challenger, after being on Match Point.

“It is hard to come to grips with it. Normally when you out-prepare a team by that much in any sport, you come away with a victory. And it didn’t happen that way.”

Davis has sailed in 11 America’s Cup campaigns, for four different national teams – as a coach and a sailor. Here are some of his comments from a Sail World interview regarding the 35th Match…

Nationality rule: “Oracle is talking about a nationality clause, but if you look at it, why would they want a nationality clause? They only had one American on the boat this time. It makes no sense. Sometimes you don’t listen to what people say; you watch their position and figure that they will do what’s best for them. I can’t see a nationality clause coming out of Oracle. I don’t think Larry Ellison cares if there are not a lot of Challengers, so long as he hangs onto the Cup. I don’t think we will see much change in the nationality rule.”

Cost reduction: “We might see some changes in the one-design components of the boat – to try and make the boats less expensive by saving on designer costs. To try and make the America’s cup less expensive is a difficult, difficult thing to do. All you need is one team, one guy, who is prepared to spend more money and time and that will drag everybody else in that direction to match them and be competitive. How are you going to trim the budget by 20%? I don’t see it happening in reality. They want to have the AC45’s racing in the future and do the ACWS type circuit. But that has a cost to it. And should those 45’s be modified to be foiling like the AC boats? If so, that’s going to be more expensive, isn’t it? ‘How do you practically pull cost back? I pity the poor guy who is responsible for that.”

Click here for full interview.