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Yacht racing's premier event began as a wager. In 1851, a half-dozen businessmen at the New York Yacht Club effectively told their counterparts at the Royal Yacht Squadron in England, "We can build a faster boat than you, and we’re putting our money where our mouths are."
And they did, plunking down $54,000 (add another zero for the rough equivalent in today’s dollars). But their swift schooner America developed such a fearsome reputation that her owners didn’t get any takers. They settled instead for entering the Hundred Guinea Cup race around the Isle of Wight, the prize being the silver-plated chalice known today as the America's Cup.
A century and a half later, however, America's Cup officials are decrying the fact that folks again are placing bets on their favorite boats. Both Team New Zealand and the America's Cup Challenge Association want to stop New Zealand's Totalisator Agency Board from tarnishing the sterling image of the cup by taking bets on the game in the gulf.
Nonetheless, one must question whether New Zealand officials are truly taking the moral high ground or just whining from self-interest. One of Team New Zealand's five top sponsors is the Lotteries Commission, which is in direct competition with the TAB for gambling dollars.
Cup Restructuring
Also simmering behind the scenes and threatening to come to a boil that eventually will need lancing are plans to restructure the America's Cup. Although there is no consensus on details, the concept is to take the America's Cup out of the 19th century and into the 21st century.
The proponents effectively would take the race away from the yacht clubs and operate it like a mainstream professional sporting event with a single governing body — including a well-paid commissioner and full-time staff that would stage the $300 million regatta every two or three years. They argue this would make it more appealing to commercial sponsors by making more money available for the event and the professional sailors who now dominate it.
One of the proponents is Tom Ehman, who from 1987 to 1992 was executive director of San Diego’s much-maligned America's Cup Organizing Committee, the organization that an Australian journalist dubbed "a-cock-up." Ehman's critics argue that he merely wants to be anointed as the first America's Cup commissioner.
Also weighing in on the matter is Mr. America's Cup himself, Dennis Conner, who opposes the notion of a single management authority. Conner, who operates the sports marketing firm that bears his name, Dennis Conner Sports Inc., thinks the event is fine the way it is. Translation: To the victor go the spoils. Staging the event and reaping any economic benefits therefrom are the reward for mounting a multimillion-dollar campaign.
However, even though Conner is based in Point Loma where he owns a waterfront home and a deli/liquor store, one has to question whether he would defend the cup in San Diego again.
You may recall that in 1987, after bringing the Cup home from Down Under — with pie-in-the-sky talk of its $1 billion impact on San Diego’s economy — there was talk of moving the event to Long Beach or Hawaii.
It would be no surprise if Conner shopped the event around and offered it to the highest bidder. (Which is what Ehman is suggesting, except that his proposed America's Cup International would issue the RFPs, not the cup winner.)
But such talk may be moot. While Conner appears bound for the semifinals in January, if I were a betting man, my money would be on a challenger final of San Francisco's AmericaOne vs. Italy's Prada, AmericaOne coming out on top. Following that scenario, the 2003 America's Cup would be either in New Zealand again or at its new home in San Francisco.
Spectator Appeal
Ironically, in the midst of the restructuring talk, terms such as "entertainment value" and "spectator appeal" are being tossed around. I suggested — not entirely tongue-in-cheek — that if these guys truly want to increase spectator appeal, they need to take a cue from NASCAR.
Why do so many people watch deafening machines roar around an oval? Because cars crash. The problem with sailboat racing is that not only are the boats comparatively slow, but rarely does anything spectacular happen to them. Perhaps a few boat bashings are in order.
Better yet, the sailors could take a cue from the World Wrestling Federation and script the races. The guy with the short straw on any given day loses a man overboard, blows out a spinnaker at a critical moment in a tight race, or drops a mast over the side. If the ratings are down, sink a boat or two. That will create spectator appeal, I suggested.
I don’t know whether I have telekinetic powers or I’m just a prophet of doom. Three hours later, Young America jackknifed and began sinking — and the America's Cup was back in the headlines in America.
Of course, the bookies would want in on this action, too. But only if they knew ahead of time who the designated fall guy was for any given race. That would lead to woeful cries of, "The fix is in." And we'd be full circle — America's Cup officials decrying the fact that people are placing bets on something so genteel as a yacht race.
After all, it’s OK for the punters to plunk down their hard-earned pennies at the racetrack, but bet on yacht racing? Well, that’s a horse of a different color.
Larry M. Edwards is a San Diego journalist in New Zealand working on the official America's Cup Web site, www.americascup.org. While there, he has promised to regularly send New Zealand Notes.
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