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SCUTTLEBUTT No. 654 - September 26, 2000AMERICA'S CUP - Tom Ehman(Tom Ehman is involved in both the America's Cup and Formula One racing at a high level. With F1 returning to the USA this past weekend (Indy) for the first time since 1991, we found these observations very interesting.) Formula One and the America's Cup are remarkably similar. Both are tests of management, marketing, technology, teamwork and, in the end, "driving" skills around a tortuous and ever-changing track. Weather even plays a key role in both sports. The obvious difference between F1 and the AmCup is that F1 is a modern, well-organized global enterprise while the AC is a Persian bazaar with rules and structures that have changed little in 150 years. If the AC were properly organized, there could be ten or fifteen strong teams, not three or four. The venues could be making money, not losing as they did again in New Zealand. There would be stable on-going profitable teams, our sport would be prospering, sponsors would be seeking us out rather than the other way around as it is now, and top designers, sailmakers, builders, sailors and others would be making a very good living, not boom and bust and moving all over the world never knowing when and where their next job is. The other big difference is the industries behind the sports. Of course the sailing industry is smaller compared to automotive. No sailing event, regardless how well organized and led, is ever going to approach F1 in mass-popularity. However, sailing and specifically the America's Cup have many fascinating attributes appealing to a global upscale market: history, tradition, beauty, ecology, technology, broad global participation (more countries "do" sailing than most any other sport -- from the Nordic countries to the South Pacific islands), etc. Moreover, sailing is one of a very few sports played at a high level by the world's largest economies (i.e., markets for sponsors) including USA, Japan, Germany, UK, France, Brazil, Italy, Spain, Russia, Scandinavia, and Canada. Even China has won an Olympic gold medal in sailing. So while not F1, sailing has much to offer audiences in the way of fascination and excitement, and hence deliver those audiences to sponsors. These days the "e" word is key... e not for "electronic," but "entertainment." McLuhan was right: the medium IS the message. It is widely accepted that television and now the Internet create a global entertainment economy: news, politics, business, even war has become "entertainment" thanks (or no thanks!) to electronic media. Of course marketers have long since treated sports as just another form of entertainment.... What sponsorship generally accomplishes better than advertising is establishing qualitative attributes, such as shaping consumers' image of a brand, increasing favorability ratings and generating awareness. Consumer attitudes are the hardest thing to change. The more a brand is part of events that are part of a consumer's lifestyle, the more positive their attitudes are toward the brand. Sponsors support events not for what happens on track, or on the water, as much as what happens off track -- TV advertising, promotional event support, and point of purchase materials are key. Sponsorship cannot happen on a large scale (America's Cup budget levels) unless the "property" is global and well-organized with the associated rights tightly controlled and professionally developed. 15 years ago F1 was as fractious as the AC is today -- then Bernie Eccelstone got the teams, venues and FIA (motorsport equivalent of ISAF) to compete on-track but cooperate off. He got control of and developed the global rights to the benefit of all involved, and FIA leveled the playing field. Recent developments are encouraging. Leaders at NYYC, St Francis and in Auckland are now calling for modernization. Prada as Challenger of Record is quietly working to unify and strengthen marketing and promotion for 2002-3. Several savvy, to say nothing of affluent, new "team owners" have stepped forward. And there are even signs that relations are improving between ISAF and the Am Cup community. Next year is the 150th anniversary of the oldest trophy in international sport is next year. What better time to convene a "constitutional convention" of America's Cup leaders to amend the Deed and modernize the America's Cup? - Tom Ehman. OLYMPIC RACING Sydney, Australia (Sept. 26, 2000) -- Following Monday night's spectacular medal presentation on the forecourt of the Sydney Opera House (for 49er, Mistral Men and Women, and Tornado classes), sailing resumed on Tuesday for five of the six classes left to determine medals. Finn and Star classes took to offshore courses for their third day of racing while Europe and Lasers used Sydney Harbour as their stage for moving into their fourth day. Solings also started and completed their match racing quarterfinals, for which USA failed to claim a participatory berth. Sailors competed in sporadic, at times pouring, rain and light winds, which freshened to 14-19 knots only on the offshore courses. In the minds of Star sailors Mark Reynolds (San Diego, Calif.) and Magnus Liljedahl (Miami, Fla.), a sixth-place finish followed by a tenth relegated their performance today to "mediocre." The resulting scores, however, lifted the two, who currently reign as the class world champions, from 11th to seventh overall. "We just weren't quite getting in sync," said Reynolds. "It was a nice breeze today. Our speed is good in that condition, but the shifts are as important if not more important in it, and we weren't playing them that well." In Finn racing today, Russ Silvestri (San Francisco, Calif.) improved his overall position one notch to sixth, turning in race scores of 2-16. With six races now complete, he has 38 points to leader Iain Percy's (GBR) 18. He is only 11 points out of third and 15 points out of second. "I'd rather be on the front side of the top group instead of the back side," said Silvestri, "but there are five races left and I'm still counting a 16th." Silvestri hopes to discard that finish, as allowed, after nine races are completed. Silvestri noted that the first race, sailed in 12 knots, suited him better than the second, which ended in barely five knots. "Boat speed is not the issue. I've just got to shift gears better than I did and make something happen when it's not going right for me. Changing winds also plagued the Laser fleet, causing today's first of two scheduled races to be abandoned as the fleet began its first leg. Once the race was restarted, John Myrdal (Kailua, Hawaii) moved smartly to finish second, as he had done in race six, held three days ago when the fleet last sailed. Meanwhile, the Laser class's most renowned international players -- Ben Ainslie (GBR), Robert Scheidt (BRA) and Michael Blackburn (AUS) -- finished 11th, 21st and 23rd, respectively. The three remain in the top-five overall; however, Myrdal, in 17th, believes that with 43 boats in his fleet, it is mathematically possible to beg their company over the four races remaining. Europe sailor Courtenay Dey (The Dalles, Ore./Rye, N.Y.) finished 15-6 today to land in 15th position overall. "I'm happy with the sixth; the 15th is a keeper, but not a great keeper. Everyone has had their day and today was Argentina's, who won. There were huge downwind changes and she could do nothing wrong." With eight races down and three to go, the Europes will observe a reserve day tomorrow. Also tomorrow, USA will join a showdown for medals in both 470 divisions, which have their 11th and final races scheduled. The 470 Men's team of Paul Foerster (Garland, Texas) and Bob Merrick (Portsmouth, R.I.) and the 470 Women's team of JJ Isler (La Jolla, Calif.) and Pease Glaser (Long Beach, Calif.) each have a shot at the Olympic gold and are all but guaranteed a medal of another color. In men's division, a protest lost by Ukraine, Savannah's gold medallists, disqualified the team from race ten and effectively knocked that country out of medal contention, giving Foerster and Merrick another handy points buffer and one less team to monitor on the race course. STANDINGS: 470 M - 1. AUS (36 points) 2. USA (41) 3. ARG (47) 470 W - 1. AUS (33) 2. GER (41) 3. USA (42) EUROPE - 1. ARG (31) 2. GBR (32) 3. ESP (45) 15. USA (85) FINN - 1. GBR (18) 2. SWE (23) 3. POL (27) 6. USA (38) STAR - 1. BRA (13) 2. AUS (20) 3. BER (20) 7. USA (34) LASER - 1. GBR (24) 2. BRA (38) 3. POR (45) 17. USA (89) 49er (Final) - 1. FIN (55) 2. GBR (60) 3. USA (64) MISTRAL M (Final) - 1. AUT (38) 2. ARG (43) 3. NZL (48)11. USA (92) MISTRAL W (Final) - 1. ITA (15) 2. GER (15) 3. NZL (19) 4. USA (45) TORNADO (Final) - 1. AUT (16) 2. AUS (25) 3. GER (38) 7. USA (57) SOLING - USA eliminated from match racing phase. For more information: http://www.ussailing.org/olympics/2000 RED, WHITE AND BLUE Yes, you can get Protectors in these colors. In fact, they come in Yellow, Gray, light blue and black as well. Not only do Protector RIB's have unparalleled performance, they also look great and with a double-bunk cabin, they more useful than you average RIB. Stay dry, stay safe, stay warm! Drive a Protector today. Demo the 28-foot cabin RIB at the Annapolis boat show. . Check us out at www.protectorusa.com or call toll free 877.664.BOAT (2628). THE RACE Despite Dartmouth being shrouded in mist and torrential rain, preparations for the first sea passage of the repaired Maxi Catamaran Team Philips continued. The twin ocean going rudders, noticeable in the gloom because of their vivid orange colour, were installed by divers at low water this morning. Skipper Pete Goss led the crew in adding the final touches to the rigging. Andy Hindley completed the installation of electrical equipment in the hulls. The team is hoping that weather conditions improve overnight. They need extremely light winds if they are to reposition the sails in the mast track in time for the hoped-for first day sail on Wednesday. - http://www.teamphilips.com/ LETTERS TO THE CURMUDGEON (leweck@earthlink.net) Letters selected to be printed are edited for clarity, space (250 words max) or to exclude unfounded speculation or personal attacks. This is not a chat room - you only get one letter per subject, so give it your best shot and don't whine if others disagree. -- From Chris Johannessen - We worry too much about which classes are included in Olympic sailing and too little about what events are included. By this I mean, we have individual racing and we have (some) match racing. Yes, we need to include women in the match racing. We have board sailing. What about TEAM RACING??? What a great nationalistic thing, talk about excitement, talk about something that will work on TV and be truly interesting and worthy of inclusion in the Olympics. There are team events or racing in many other sports. And team racing in sailing allows not just team scoring, but all sorts of interesting opportunities for true teamwork between boats as well as between skippers and crews. Let's have Olympic Fleet Racing, Match Racing AND Team Racing. If we need to trim some events, let's prune the duplication we currently have with multiple classes of similar boats (ie: lose the Finn, we have the Laser, and lose the 470 in favor of the 49er). That would leave us with: - FLEET RACING Keelboat: Star - how about a change to 3 person that women can be competitve in (Etchells?) that is not so heavily biased towards huge skippers and crews? Centerboarder: 49er (men), 470 (women) Dinghy: Laser (men), Europe (women) Boardsailing: Mistral (men), Mistral (women) - MATCH RACING Soling (men) should have event for women (how about J/24 or J/22?) - TEAM RACING Low tech centerboarder (mid-weight teams desirable) putting emphasis on tactical sailing: Vanguard 15? -- From Terry Hutchinson - Thanks for the credit (for Esmerelda's winning effort at the Big Boat Series) in Scuttlebutt but Erle Williams was the tactician, Ian Moore navigator, and I was Erle's sounding board. Just need to give Erle credit for a job well done! -- From Steve Eller - I think a lot of people miss the point about professionals and sailing. I think that sailing against professionals and really good amateurs improves everyone's sailing skills but it is also pretty cool. How many other sports allow weekend mullets like me to simply show up and compete at the world-class level. The best analogy would be having some weekend car racer take his 1970 Camaro (mostly Bondo at this point) to the Daytona 500 and run the track with Jarrett, Earnhart, Gordon and the rest of the NASCAR celebrities. Sailing is a great sport because it is so inclusive. Do you want to race Key West - show up. SORC - show up. NOODs - show up. There are not many other sports that allow this. It is even better for me as a member of the 505 class, the fleet hotshots actually spend a great deal of time telling you all of their secrets! Professionals should be allowed at all levels of racing. -- From Tom Donlan - It appears that the big problem is the classification of sailors, not the distribution of professionals among active racing boats. The powers that be have given us a whole lot of rules defining professionals, and then race organizers have used the rules to create more rules about who can race when. Sure the rules are overly rigid. Consider the source. The Olympic-centered international sports bureaucracy is of little benefit to most sailors. We don't need these rules. There are plenty of classes and venues usually ignored by the pros. If you don't want to race against pro crews, sail a boat in a class that's thoroughly amateur, or stick to the local races in those classes where the pros only come to the districts and the nationals. Failing that, I would prefer a worldwide Corinthian rule: you can't be paid to race sailboats, anytime, anywhere, any class, nor can you accept "charitable" donations to cover the expenses of racing. Most of the wretched excess in our sport would immediately disappear, or be driven into purely professional wretched excess like the America's Cup and The Race. To those who will say that this would wreck the chances of people without wealth to compete at a high level, I would ask: What's so important about competing at a high level? -- From Joe Erwin - Mr. Skinner and Mr. Johnson variously say that US Sailing should set up a handicapping system for sailors and that sailing should look to golf for a handicapping system. Well, the much maligned US Sailing has already done so. See the link to SALT (Sailing Level Achievement Table) on the Competitor Eligibility page at the US Sailing website. SALT was first published 2 or 3 years ago in American Sailor. It does exactly what your readers suggest, namely, handicapping the sailors based on position on the boat, success of the boat in a regatta, etc. The problem is that no regatta organizer is using the system. -- Douglas Johnstone - From I went to vist my wife and new baby at Cedares Sinai yesterday and saw am man wearing aT shirt that stated" If you want to be the best you must compete against the best". That says it all. I am a fairly new Star sailor. In the two years of sailing the Star I have sailed in the same fleet as Mark Reynolds, Eric Doyle and Vince Brun. Truly an awesome experience. To get blown away by the best at the start of a race is exciting. Let's play with the best and against the best, and quit whining. In my opinion all this harping about the poor quality of handicap racing is a waste. There will always be handicap racing as long as there is individuality. For those who have to compete on a level ground there will always be one-design. I say long live handicap racing and long live one-design. I enjoy both forms of racing and actively compete in both arenas, not very well, but I still do it! Let's move on to a new subject. Curmudgeon's Comment: YES - it's time to move on. The professional /amateur thread and the handicapping thread are now both OFFICIALLY DEAD. THE VIEW FROM DOWN UNDER - Bob Fisher The increasing number of coaches at the Olympic Regatta is causing concern at the highest level and the evidence is all too obvious. Behind the starting area of every race, there is a gaggle of inflatable boats in which sit the coaches. Almost every sailor has one. They are becoming de rigeur and this is worrying those who run the sport for, they say, it is turning the sailors into automatons and eliminating the chances of those from smaller, less wealthy nations. Their argument is that the coaches affect the sailors and what they do on the course and that there should be a time when all contact with them should cease. They are no longer there as drivers of boats with spare sails and tools, now they have sophisticated information gathering equipment and are monitoring the changing meteorological patterns around the courses and feeding the information to the sailors between races, and advising them of what to do. International Sailing Federation (ISAF) President Paul Henderson was dismissive of what he called "The collection of has-beens and never-wases out there," as superfluous to the sport, particularly at this level and particularly during the pinnacle regatta. He remarked that he would have liked to have seen any coach tell Buddy Melges which way to go and recalled Buddy's remark when he asked him once why he tacked off his hip in a Star race on Lake Geneva (Wisconsin) and made a noticeable gain when he tacked back a minute later. "Buddy shrugged his shoulders and said, 'Well it felt good,' and that was good enough for me," he recalled. Henderson believes that there should still be room for the sailors with flair and that they are being overwhelmed by the needless technology which has entered the sport through excessive coaching. While there is nothing wrong with coaches improving sailors' techniques, the on-the-water attendance at regattas should go. - Bob Fisher, Boats.com website Full story: http://boats.com/content/default_detail.jsp?contentid=10744 MFS REGATTA J/24 WORLDS NEWPORT, R.I., USA (September 25, 2000) - Brad Read and his crew of Jay Miles (Newport, R.I.), Gordon Borges (New Bedford, Mass.), Randy Borges (Bristol, R.I.), and Paul Grenauer (Buffalo, N.Y.) sailed to a victory in the opening race of the MFS Regatta J/24 World Championship, topping a 73-boat fleet that includes world champions, America's Cup sailors, and many talented one-design skippers. The regatta opened with a crisp 18-knot northerly breeze on the Atlantic Ocean. "We started about 10 seconds late in pretty bad air, but we reached through the guy who won the pin end," said Read. "The line was five degrees or so favored to the pin. No one could really lay the line, so we thought, 'Be conservative. Don't try and win it.' As Jay put it, it didn't matter how much we had to reach, we were in the top 15 or 20 off the line." At the first windward mark Read and his crew on Blind Squirrel climbed into the top five boats, and as the wind continued to shift Read kept his concentration on sailing fast. That speed paid off as Blind Squirrel rounded the second windward mark in the lead and never looked back, finishing the race by almost a minute ahead of second-place Convicts Revenge, skippered by Stephen Girdis (Sydney, Australia). - Dana Paxton Standings: 1. Brad Read, Middletown, RI; 2. Stehen Girdis, Sydney, AUS; 3. Carlos Campolo, Buenos Aires,ARG; 4. Stuart Challoner, Island Heights, NJ; 5. Will Crump, Oxford, MD; 6. Al Hobart, Fayston, VT; 7. Yoshio Kitayama, JPN; 8. Britt Hughes, Stratford, CONN; 9. Juan Grimaldi, Mar del Plata, ARG; 10. Andrew Pimental, Newport, RI; Event website: http://www.sailnewport.org/worlds/ SOLUTIONS FROM SAILCLOTH.COM Wish your spinnaker would dry off after dunking, hold its shape after a few heavy air days of sailing, and resist tearing during complicated maneuvers? Next time, ask your sailmaker to use AIRX, a revolutionary new spinnaker fabric from Bainbridge International. AIRX is stronger, lower in stretch and has an ultra water repellent finish. With zero porosity and less tearing, it has a wide range of use for both racing a cruising sailors. AIRX is exclusively from Bainbridge International, where power and performance are cut from the same cloth. For more information, visit http://www.sailcloth.com IMAGES * If you missed the broadcast on the Kenwood Cup Sunday night, you still have another chance to see it.... but you might want to set you VCR and tape it. The coverage this year focuses in on the exhilarating Farr 40 class, a few SCARY collisions, and a man overboard situation on the infamous Molokai Channel Race. Dawn Riley, who sailed America True in the America's Cup, is back as commentator, and as usual, Gary Jobson is alongside. The Kenwood Cup airs in Honolulu TUESDAY, SEPT 26 @ 11:00PM, WEDNESDAY, Sept 27th @ 1:00AM in California, and WEDNESDAY, SEPT 27 @ 4:00AM on the East Coast. * Adrenalin Images has a great selection of photos from the StFYC Big Boat Series at: http://adrenalinimages.com * There are also some great Big Boat Series photos on the Latitude 38 website: http://www.latitude38.com/LectronicLat/Sept2000/Sept%2025/Sept25.html#anchor 4331356 * If you're looking for Olympic photos, you must see Daniel Forster's website: http://www.yachtphoto.com/syd00-1.html * The US Sailing website has also posted some Daniel Forster photos from Sydney: http://www.ussailing.org/olympics/2000/photos.htm THE CURMUDGEON'S OBSERVATION It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them. |
