It really is a gamble. Dickson has been able to get some practice in since he came back on the water, but not enough to make up for the eight months spent on gardening leave. But that’s not the only problem: it’s impossible to drive and plot race tactics at the same time—you don’t see the whole picture when you’re at the wheel. Even if Dickson matches Coutts, he doesn’t have anyone of the caliber of Brad Butterworth to help him. He also knows that some of the guys on the boat who are close to Holmberg may even be hoping he fails.
I ask Ellison whether, for the sake of harmony, this might be the moment to sling some of the troublemakers out of the team and bring some of the talented sailors from USA-71 on board the race boat. The following day, Ellison does decide to fire a couple of the worst agitators from the shore-based team, but tempting though it is to root out the factionalism, he thinks it’s too late to make wholesale changes. Even if the first semi-final goes to Alinghi, Ellison is confident that Oracle can reach the Louis Vuitton final by again beating OneWorld (the likely winner against Prada). With some speed tweaks to the boat, he still thinks there’s a chance of going on to the America’s Cup itself. “To take the team apart and reassemble it at this stage might be emotionally satisfying, but it’s not the way to maximize our chances of winning.”
When the local press realizes that the next day the two biggest names in New Zealand’s yachting history are going head-to-head, there’s a frenzy of excitement. Sailing journalist Ivor Wilkins writes, “Fire and Ice might be the putative title of this drama, with Dickson representing fire and Coutts ice. Dickson, mercurial, solitary, unpredictable is willing to make the high risk plays—using cunning, a lawyer’s instinct for loopholes in the law, and a fabulous intuitive talent. In the nature of high risk moves, some don’t succeed, but when they do, the results are usually spectacular. Iceman Coutts is more methodical and analytical. In the great match-racing chess game, he always plays the percentages, making his moves with patience and planning his strategies long in advance.”
After the frostiness on the chase boat the day before, I decide to watch the race from Katana after a short spell as the seventeenth man on the warmup boat. On board Katana there’s live satellite television coverage from the circling helicopters and a neat software package known as Virtual Spectator that shows not only the exact position of the boats in real time but also the strength and direction of the wind in different areas of the racecourse. As usual, Ellison has holed up in his stateroom for the duration. He gets so sick with the tension that he literally finds it hard to speak until the race is over.7
At the start, it’s Coutts who uses all his experience to get the upper hand over Dickson, Alinghi managing to sail right over the face of USA-76, “locking out” the American boat to windward. But Dickson responds brilliantly. Tacking twice, he succeeds in wriggling clear of the Swiss team’s close cover and finding a nice little puff of wind out on the right-hand side of the course that’s enough for him to pass ahead when the boats converge on the next tack. From that point on, Dickson, his face screwed up in what looks like concentration but is actually a searing migraine, seems to have control of the race, keeping Coutts comfortably at bay for well over an hour until the final beat. Then disaster strikes. Inexplicably, instead of covering Coutts when he strikes out to pick up a small wind shift on the left side of the course, Dickson holds course. The result is that with the finish line in sight, Oracle BMW suddenly finds itself three boat lengths behind. Instead of gaining a morale-boosting win to go 2–1, USA-76 now trails SUI-64 3–0—it’s a crushing blow. Emerging from his cabin, a downcast Ellison says, “The problem with having Chris on the wheel is that it means we don’t have Chris as tactician. Nobody can do both jobs at once. He drove the drag race brilliantly and beat Coutts to the lay line. We had the race won until we made that tactical blunder.”
Although Alinghi still needs to win one more race to reach the final, realistically, the chances of pegging back Coutts and Butterworth are now slim, and while Dickson has promised to make a fight of it, the focus of attention is already shifting beyond the next race. Ellison and Dickson have decided to move things around again. Holmberg is to return as the starting helmsman but will immediately hand over to Dickson once the balletic duel of the start gives way to the race proper. When and if Dickson establishes a decent fifty- to seventy-five-meter lead, the plan is for them to switch places again, allowing Dickson to “have his head out of the boat,” fully focused on keeping race-losing tactical errors down to a minimum. Ellison says that whatever happens, this will be the final configuration. Holmberg, he says, has been “very professional about all the different things we tried,” but Ellison knows that compared with the solidity and consistency of the Coutts/Butterworth partnership, they are making it up as they go along.
The next day, the racing is close, but Alinghi books itself into the Louis Vuitton final with another impressively error-free performance. If Oracle BMW is to have another shot at the Swiss team, OneWorld, which has knocked out Prada, will have to be beaten again in the repechage (second-chance) semifinal. Unfortunately for me, before the racing starts again, I have to leave New Zealand. When I arrived, Oracle BMW had won eleven races in succession, but while I’ve been there the team has lost four in a row. Inescapably, I’ve come to identify with Ellison’s black boat and it’s bitterly disappointing: I feel like some kind of Jonah.
Before I head back to London, I ask Ellison how he rates his chances now. Despite Alinghi’s apparent superiority, he’s typically optimistic: “I know we can beat them. We have several engineering changes scheduled that should speed the boat up before we have to race them again. We’ll put some of them on for the repechage. The new keel bulb we used this week actually made us a second a mile slower. We’ll replace that right away. But I’m not concerned about beating OneWorld, so we’ll hold back most of the changes for the final.” Ellison is hopeful because he thinks that SUI-64 is further up its development curve than is the newer USA-76, and for most of America’s Cup history it has been the quicker boat rather than the best sailing team that has usually won. It’s similar to Formula One car racing: put a middling driver into the fastest car, and nine times out of ten, he’ll beat the fastest driver in a middling car.
• • •
Ellison is right about one thing. Once again, Oracle BMW turns out to be too powerful for the team from Seattle, USA-76 claiming its place in the finals against Alinghi with a 4–0 walkover concluded inside a week. With OneWorld safely disposed of, the sailing team will have a short break over Christmas while major changes are made to the boat that Ellison is gambling will provide an edge against Alinghi. He has more or less conceded that preventing Coutts from dominating the starts and the first upwind leg is unrealistic. But to even the score, the plan he’s come up with requires standing America’s Cup racing conventional wisdom on its head: “The first boat to the first weather mark wins the race eighty-five percent of the time. That’s why most America’s Cup boats have an upwind design bias; that is, the boats trade away a lot of downwind speed for a little more upwind speed. But to take advantage of your upwind speed, you have to win your fair share of the starts so you can get onto the favored side of the racecourse. That’s not happening for us. Russell’s killing us in the starts, so Alinghi is beating us to the first weather mark almost every time. I don’t think that’s going to change. So the question is: How do we win the race even though they beat us to the first weather mark?”
Ellison had decided to transform the boat from being heavily biased for sailing upwind to being biased for sailing downwind. Because USA-76 is very narrow, the theory is that with the bigger sail area [the mainsail had gone from 188 to 214 square meters] that’s allowed if you lighten the keel bulb, it should be a downwind flyer, making it possible for Oracle BMW to roll past Alinghi on a downwind leg and then sail defensively for the rest of the race. What makes Ellison hopeful is that with the other tweaks, USA-76 appears to have lost very little of its upwind pace.8
The next race provides conclusive proof that if only Ellison’s team can avoid mistakes, beating Alinghi is possible. Even though it’s the Swiss boat that again takes the early lead, this time the combination of a good weather call and the sheer downwind velocity of USA-76 proves decisive, resulting in a winning delta of more than two minutes. Race five is tantalizingly close, the two boats swapping the lead several times and matching each other for both sailing skill and speed through the water. Unfortunately for Ellison, it’s the nerve of Coutts and Butterworth that holds the steadier to deliver a fourth win, but by a little more than a boat’s length at the line after more than two hours of the most intense racing. With Oracle BMW faced with elimination if it loses the next race, it’s not surprising that the heat is on Holmberg to gain an advantage at the start. Perhaps he’s trying too hard, but the upshot is that he’s penalized at the start. Knowing that USA-76 will have to complete a penalty turn at some point in the race allows SUI-64 to sail a conservative race. Despite Oracle BMW’s taking the lead on the final run, the outcome is never much in doubt.
It’s a sad ending to the campaign, but the 5–1 margin of defeat doesn’t do Ellison’s still bickering team justice. Two-time America’s Cup winner Peter Isler concluded, “It was a close series. Look at the number of lead changes compared with other rounds—that’s an indication of the closeness.” In fact, there were eight lead changes in the last four races, including two in the last half mile of the final race alone. However, Isler also pointed a finger at where he thought the weakness was: after going 2–0, Dickson had handed the helm back to Holmberg, but they had never managed to work together in the manner of Coutts and Butterworth. Isler, who used to navigate for the legendary Dennis Connor, commented, “Dickson calling the shots for Holmberg created a micromanaging afterguard structure that maybe wasn’t a good way to play it. In a match race, the helmsman has to be able to take control. In some ways it would have been better to have Chris driving.”10
The truth was that there was no ideal way for Holmberg and Dickson to work together. The penalties told a story of mistakes being made under pressure. But how much of that pressure came from within the team? And, as Ellison summed it up in an e-mail to me, “The two penalties just killed us. Without the penalties the score would have been 3 to 3 and the racing would have continued. But you have to give Alinghi credit. Brad and Russell sailed brilliantly. We gave them a lot and they gave us absolutely nothing in return. It was a brutal experience.”11
For Ellison, defeat was hard to take on many counts. It was bad enough realizing that they could have beaten Alinghi. A sympathetic e-mail from Dennis Connor provided scant comfort: “I am sure you have had better days but you did a terrific job and have every reason to be proud of your effort. I thought the boat was very good and the guys just let you down, nothing you could control. I hope you enjoyed the experience and will continue to be involved. All the best!! warm regards dennis” Unintentionally, Connor rubbed salt in the wound when he e-mailed again a couple of days later: “I thought you would like to know that last night Russell said your boat was definitely faster in the last three races. My feeling was that when the boats sailed straight for any length of time you were quicker but may have suffered in the tacking duels. Cheers! dc.” But when the Swiss team went on to trounce Team New Zealand 5–0, Ellison also knew just how close he had come to the greatest prize in yachting.
When asked if he would make another attempt to win the cup, Ellison’s answer was “Absolutely.” But until Alinghi’s triumph against the holders—something he, along with most people, had thought highly unlikely because of Team New Zealand’s innovation-packed boat—Ellison was far from certain that he would carry on. He told me, “Yeah, I said ‘absolutely,’ but the answer that kept flashing through my mind was ‘On Monday I start tennis lessons.’ Tennis is much less expensive than America’s Cup racing, and it’s a lot more fun.” Almost needless to say, it was the latter that mattered more than the former. When I was with him in New Zealand, it had seemed as though he hadn’t been getting much fun out of it. Ellison had said, “Fun? Fuck no, it wasn’t fun. I got kicked off my own boat, and then we lost. All I wanted to do was come down here and drive a sailboat. What I ended up doing was running a screwed-up sailing team. It wasn’t fun. It was just another job, a job I didn’t want. I didn’t do the job very well either, because we lost. Yeah, I know we came in second. Big deal. Second place is just the first loser.”
To mount another challenge, Ellison said that he would need two things: a united team composed not only of very good sailors but of people he liked and trusted; and a radically different format for America’s Cup racing. “The whole idea of practicing for three years, then sailing for three months, is idiotic.” The first part is relatively easy: “This time we’ll build the sailing team around Chris Dickson. There are plenty of talented guys who would love the chance to sail on an America’s Cup boat with Chris.” Practically the first signing Ellison intends to make is the young New Zealander Gavin Brady, who sat out most of this Louis Vuitton after falling out with his Prada team. Brady has a reputation for being a tad hotheaded, but he may be the best racing helmsman in New Zealand. He reminds Dickson a little of himself when he was younger.12
The second part was dependent on Alinghi’s winning the America’s Cup. The winners, in concert with the team they accept as “challenger of record” (usually the next most successful competitor) have a huge power to decide the rules for the next series. During their time in Auckland, Bertarelli and Ellison had developed a mutual liking and respect. Ellison says, “One of the good things that’s come out of all this is that Ernesto and I have become friends. It was a historic moment in sailing when he and Brad and Russell won the Cup and took it to Europe for the first time since 1861. They’re a great team. They certainly kicked our butts. They deserved to win.” Between them, the two men have hit upon the idea of turning America’s Cup racing into something much more like the Formula One car-racing circus. With Alinghi installed as holder and Oracle BMW Racing as challenger of record, Bertarelli and Ellison can drive through the rule changes they want. Of these, the most important is that there will now be at least four International America’s Cup Class regattas a year. They will be held in different parts of the world and will count as qualifying rounds for the next Louis Vuitton Cup challenger series. The holders will also race, and some races will be specifically for “owner-drivers.” It means not only plenty of sailing for the likes of Bertarelli and Ellison but a much more attractive and consistent package for television and sponsors.
The first regatta, in recognition of Ellison’s official challenger status, is to take place in September 2003 in—where else?—San Francisco Bay. This time, naturally, Ellison is quite certain that his Oracle BMW team will beat the Swiss. And this time, he really will get to drive.
* * *
1. LE writes: OneWorld eventually confessed to having design data from Team New Zealand in its possession. It was penalized one point for violating the rules, but it was allowed to go on racing.
2. LE writes: After a disappointing round-robin one, we inc
reased the size of our mainsail from 188 square meters to 200 square meters. Our results in round-robin two were much improved, but that had more to do with crew changes than the increased sail area.
3. LE writes: Paul Cayard is a formidable competitor. I found out just how formidable when he was skippering Boomerang in the maxi world championships in Sardinia. I thought that Sayonara would easily defend her title that year, but Paul had other ideas. The racing had turned out to be very close, and the championship was decided on the very last race on the very last day of the regatta. If Boomerang beat us in that race, it would take the title. The start was critical, and I lost it. Boomerang got out ahead early. We were both on starboard tack, with Sayonara to weather a couple of boat lengths behind. It looked pretty grim. But very gradually, I was able to creep up and close the gap—meter by meter—until Sayonara got to the point where Boomerang couldn’t tack and safely cross in front of us. If she tried, she might be penalized or have to tack on our lee bow to avoid us. She didn’t tack, so from that point on, it became a drag race out toward the port lay line. We got there first, tacked in front, and led them to the weather mark. We rounded the buoy more than three boat lengths ahead and held on the rest of the way home. Boomerang had never come close to beating Sayonara in a regatta. But somehow Paul Cayard found a way to make her competitive. He is America’s best big-boat sailor.
4. LE writes: The Apple board replaced Steve Jobs with John Scully, didn’t it? How stupid was that? Brilliant, disciplined, intensely goal-oriented leaders routinely alienate the people they work with because they push too hard. They make the mistake of thinking everyone else on the team wants to win as much as they do. Michael Jordan was not popular with many of his teammates because he’d get in their face for not playing hard enough. Vince Lombardi “Winning is everything” types have a hard time coexisting with Rodney King “Why can’t we all just get along?” types.
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