America’s Cup, doubts about the headquarters and on Burling, Ineos gets indiet

There is great confusion under the sky of the America’s Cup. The only certainty is that within two months – unless extensions on the timing that no one hopes – the Defender Team New Zealand will have to communicate the new location. He will not be able to defend it in Auckland since he did not recover the break with the New Zealand government but the Challenger, surely, are happy: in the Hauraki Gulf it would have been practically impossible to bring home the trophy. At the moment, there are no alternatives to Athens who has proposed thanks to the (for now) commitment deprived of the rich entrepreneur George Prokopiou, passionate dares.

What will Burling do?

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In reality, Team New Zealand has an even more important problem (perhaps): the separation from Peter Burling. With a fairly cryptic press release, which does not clarify the dynamics, the group led by Grant Dalton announced the end of the relationship. “The discussions between the team management and Burling are underway from Barcelona, ​​but it was not possible to reach an agreement. With the America’s Cup that is being configured as a more regular cycles competition, the requirements for the members of the team are changing. With the balance between design, simulation, construction of the boat, tests and windows of increasingly reduced regattas, the integration of the key sailors with the design team becomes more critical that becomes more critical than Never ”we read in the release of the New Zealanders. Something later Barcelona must obviously have broken. Premise: if there is a nation that since she made her debut in America’s Cup has been able to make the most of the small but excellent ‘tank’ of sailors is precisely New Zealand. The old essay Cino Ricci commented on the story. “They build the phenomena. Let’s think of those who preceded Burling: Dickson, Blake, Coutts, Barker … all phenomena. But they are not the ones who made the team, it is the team that made them. It is the DNA of Team New Zealand”. Of course, it will not be easy to find a helmsman of Burling’s value quickly: he left after having conquered or defended three consecutive America’s Cup: Bormuda 2017, Auckland 2020, Barcelona 2024. In the 2017 edition, at just 26 years old, he became the youngest helmsman ever to raise the old jug. Crust of a large previous career where he won a gold and two Olympic silver in 49er, as well as 12 world medals.

do the rules change?

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The question is only one: we will see it on board in the next edition or will it only dedicate itself to Sailgp, the circuit where is one of the protagonists? In theory, it could not take part in the next America’s Cup with a foreign team because point 30.2 of the protocol is clear: a passport of the nation is needed for which to run, obtained at least three years before the event. So we are not there. Perhaps. In the ‘sitting room’ of America’s Cup, there is the feeling that the rules of the protocol will be changed shortly to make the passage of nationality less complicated. The phrase “The requirements for team members are changing” in the Team New Zealand press release can mean everything and nothing, but there is. In fact, it is no mystery that other teams, in particular Aldhi Red Bull Racing, are pressing pressure to get out of the stakes. Ernesto Bertarelli, patron of Aldhi and sportsmen who does not like to compete without having the opportunity to try to win, insists on the topic, to be able to put together a more competitive team than that composed of alone Swiss in the race in Barcelona. In the memory of the Kiwi there is terror that what happened after 2000 repeated, when a rule on the much softer allowed Bertarelli to hire the best of Team New Zealand, Russell Coutts and Brad Butterworth above all, then tear the trophy to the Kiwis themselves in 2003.

The position of Luna Rossa

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Voices also run that a ‘liberated’ Burling could be of interest to Patrizio Bertelli: the chief of Luna Rossa said he wanted to focus on young people (Ruggero Tita and Marco Fatoni in the first place) but thinking coldly, he would not make sense to give up a priori to a powerful injection of experience and skill like that of the Tauranga champion. Those who no longer think about the sailing -market is certainly Sir James Ratcliffe who has decided, equally surprisingly, to leave the scene: Ineos Britannia will not take part in the next America’s Cup. In the official press release, Ratcliffe takes off a Sassolino accusing Athena Racing – the new team of her ex -Skipper Ben Ainslie – of not having respected the timing of an agreement between the parties. Beyond the personal fact, behind the choice to abandon the regatta, there is a global reduction of sponsorships in various sectors, the sport in particular, of the chemical industry giant. The first effects suffered were the Mercedes team of Formula 1 and the Manchester United, a Premier League team of which Ineos has an important share. Moral of the fairy tale: for now the safe Challengers are Athena Racing (which will be fundamental for the drafting of the new protocol, this too should not be forgotten), Luna Rossa, American Magic, Aldhi Red Bull Racing – provided that they satisfy a minimum patron Bertarelli, while on the French of Orient Express there are strong doubts.