Bonnefous Interview

A long interview with ACM CEO Michel Bonnefous, Alinghi general manager during the last Cup, by the IHT's Christopher Clary, is featured in today's New York Times and is well worth the read....

Q. & A.
A Conversation With Michel Bonnefous

Published: April 14, 2007

Michel Bonnefous was general manager of the winning team during the last America’s Cup, but he is trying to project neutrality this time.

Bonnefous has spent the last three years with his wife and three young sons in Valencia, Spain.

Shortly after the Swiss and their mercenaries from New Zealand swept the home team in Auckland, Bonnefous was named president of America’s Cup Management with the backing of his boyhood friend Ernesto Bertarelli, the Swiss billionaire who remains head of Alinghi and part of its crew.

While past Cups have had separate organizing bodies for the challenger trials and the America’s Cup, Bertarelli and his principal rival Larry Ellison believed it needed just one. Their answer was America’s Cup Management (ACM). Bonnefous, with his close-cropped hair, thin-framed glasses and casual manner, has spent the last three years with his wife and three young sons in Valencia, Spain, the city he helped select as the site of these races, which are being held in European waters for the first time in 156 years.

Bonnefous presides over the biggest organizational budget in the event’s history, and last month in his unpretentious office with a view of the transformed port, he discussed the present and future of the competition with Christoper Clarey of The New York Times.

Excerpts from that interview:

CLAREY: What are your feelings as you look at the new bases and the new marinas?

BONNEFOUS: Even before we won with Alinghi, we sat down with a very small group and isolated ourselves and developed a kind of blueprint for what the organization would be like in case of victory. We put it away in a locker and then took it back out when we were in the final of the America’s Cup.

Now this is a reality, and it’s very close to the initial project we imagined four years ago, so that’s pretty interesting to see that we have more or less what we wanted. It’s great to see a big project coming through and changing a city. That’s new for the America’s Cup, using the event that way. It has been done somewhat in the past, but not really organized to this degree. This is truly an Olympic-style project.

CLAREY: What do you think will define this Cup in Valencia?

BONNEFOUS: There are two aspects for me: the social aspect and the sports aspect. Socially, this will definitely feel Spanish. When you have 60,000 or 100,000 people at 9 p.m. and all the bars open and there is a lot of life, you’re going to know you’re in Spain. We have made efforts to try to create a social environment around the competition that will be attractive and will work. I think this is important for the America’s Cup.

The other side is the sports event. And for this edition what I hope will be the defining element is that the teams are certainly going to be extremely close and that’s the effect of the Acts we had leading up to the Cup. In the previous Vuitton Cups, an underdog team would have the opportunity to sail two times against Alinghi and two times against Oracle, so that underdog team would do six races against top teams in the whole campaign.

But with this new format, the underdogs have sailed I don’t know how many races against the top teams. When you examine the previous Vuitton Cups, at the end the underdogs were very close to the others but only by the end after they had improved over three months of competitions. But this time I’m convinced we will see closer racing. I won’t say the favorites won’t end up the winners, because they have high operational capacities. But the underdogs this time are starting on a much higher level, and I think that’s what’s going to be great. The other aspect is that we have been using this class of America’s Cup boats for five editions now, so that also will make the boats closer.

CLAREY: There are skeptics, but do you feel you’ve been able to change the chip from Alinghi team member to America’s Cup Management?

BONNEFOUS: I’ve been able to change the mentality totally, because it’s not that difficult and because it’s my job. Alinghi was one approach. It’s totally different here, but for me this is the same kind of job, organizing and problem solving. I stay pretty objective. I like Alinghi, because we created it, but it doesn’t mean the decisions we take now with ACM are not fair. We can take fair decisions but still be a bit emotionally attached.

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Michel Bonnefous (SUI, right) holding the Cup after Alinghi's historic win at Auckland in 2003, with skipper Russell Coutts (NZL, left) and team owner and sailing team member Ernesto Bertarelli (SUI, center).