CC MEMO -- Food for Thought

[Update 13 Oct 05 -- More of an addition than an update. Just to say that since publishing this interview we have learned it was not written "open access" for the 2007AC Forums (which is from where we copied it), but apparently was an original piece done by Michelle Slade for Scuttlebutt (North America) edited by our long-time friend Tom Leweck. In the meantime it has been run by a number of other outlets with credit to the CC Blog, where credit is properly due Scuttlebutt. Anyone else taking this interview should credit 'Butt and link to www.sailingscuttlebutt.com. --TFE]


About halfway through each Cup cycle, talk begins to turn to the next one. How would you do it if you won or were Challenger of Record? From time to time the CC Blog will post interesting notes and commentary on possible future scenarios. Here is one from Andy Green (GBR) as interviewed by Michelle Slade (USA) earlier this week:

I really think that the Acts have been a great success, It has been a first effort for the America's Cup to bring the sport into the modern age, as in my view, it was in the dark ages on previous occasions as it took a large amount of money to undertake a challenge every four years.

The return on this used to be three months of action and of that only about two or three weeks of semi-finals and finals. For the sponsors to cough up huge amounts of money for what virtually amounted to 2 ½ years of secrecy was clearly unsustainable. I think the Cup would have struggled to move anywhere if the Acts had not been introduced, and in my view, this is just a first effort and it has been a huge success.

Here in Trapani the crowds are enormous, trying to get in, be involved, be part of the action and see the Americas Cup, which is on view. There were 25,000 people at the opening ceremony, when Trapani only has a population of 70,000.

I don’t think that anybody – whoever wins the Cup – will be able to do it any differently now that the progress and development has gone this far. The Acts are becoming bigger than anything, and looking beyond 2007, I see this as being really big. For instance, a lot of the sponsors will go to Dubai for an Act, or to San Francisco or China, or Germany or France. I think we may well have three years of traveling the world with certain blocks of time put out when there is no other sailing, no testing, just participation in the Acts, with the boats and teams being shipped around a season in Europe, a season in America and a season in Asia.

--Andy Green



Andy "Red Bull" Green, professional sailor and Cup commentator, cruising through the Trapani paddock today.