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Bertarelli To Turn His Back On The America's Cup
The weekly drip feed announcements about the route for the next Volvo Ocean Race has heightened interest and speculation in the Everest of ocean racing from an unlikely source. Far from licking his wounds and counting the financial cost of losing the America's Cup to Larry Ellison's BMW Oracle Racing team, Swiss billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli is, we hear, casting around for a fresh challenge to keep his Alinghi sailing team together. An entry in next year's Volvo race is we understand, very much on the cards. If it happens, then Ernesto's No 2, Brad Butterworth will again be key player.
Butterworth cut his teeth as a global gladiator, racing aboard Peter Blake's all-conquering 'Steinlager 2' maxi ketch as a watch leader. They won every leg of the 1989/90 Whitbread Race, the precursor to the Volvo event.
He competed in the race again four years later as co-skipper to Dennis Conner in the Whitbread 60 'Winston'. It was not such a happy experience, but the new Volvo 70 has Butterworth licking his lips. Interviewed on the Volvo web site, Butterworth says: "The Volvo 70s are what the sailors always wanted...and now they have a class of racing machine that is truly dynamic. It is like any other class of boat, from Olympic dinghy to Transpac sled, in that you have to have a complete package, a well thought out programme, and then some great sailors."
Key to this Swiss challenge however, is the inclusion of Ras al Khaimah, which was to host the 33rd America's Cup until the New York Supreme Court had its say, as the Gulf stopover port for the Volvo race. Bertarelli has a debt to pay the small Emirate for the money wasted preparing for last month's court imposed America's Cup match and the politics at play here could yet unseat Abu Dhabi, the obvious choice for the Volvo stopover in the Gulf. Word from the desert suggests that the deal in play Ras al Khaimah paying to bring the race to their shores, while Bertarelli picks up the tab for a new boat and the race campaign itself. Could this be the way Alinghi utilise their unused investment in the Gulf? -- Barry Pickthall
