Putting on a brave face
Ivor Wilkins talks to the CEO of America’s Cup 34 – Stephen Barclay
Stephen Barclay tells questioners he knows nothing about yachting, which may sound like a fatal flaw for somebody charged with marketing and running the America’s Cup, the sport’s greatest show on earth. As a New Zealander, though, he can scarcely avoid some connection with the sport and he acknowledges that his father-in-law did at least own a well-known classic yacht.
What he means, then, is he doesn’t know much about professional yachting at the level of the event over which he now presides. ‘It is all relative,’ he smiles. ‘But in this environment, whenever people ask I say I don’t know the front from the back.’
Barclay is almost as surprised as anybody else to find himself propelled from absolutely nowhere in the yachting world to presiding over its premier event. In five hectic years this transformation has been nothing short of a baptism by fire – particularly after he switched from Oracle Racing to become CEO of the powerful America’s Cup Event Authority blurring, as he went, those promised ‘neutral management’ boundaries. Indeed, there must have been times when he wondered whether his old university mate Russell Coutts did him any favours at all by drawing him into this often fractious arena.
In more recent times the vision expounded by Larry Ellison and Russell Coutts has been dramatically scaled back. The challenger fleet has dwindled to three, with Korea’s chances now all but written off. High expectations in the city have been downsized and Louis Vuitton, for 30 years the mainstay sponsor of the challenger series, is less than thrilled at the prospect of the smallest fleet in four decades.
To sum up, Ellison’s massive investment has created an exciting, if much reduced, spectacle but little return from a commercial point of view. Especially in the context of what is a nine-figure outlay…
At a speech in Auckland in mid-2011, when challengers were already melting away, Coutts made a telling comment. ‘Larry Ellison is not an easy person to justify failure to,’ he said. It was a sobering indication of the pressure to deliver a good event for the Oracle boss’s home crowd.
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Two of two
There are many ironic facts about the 2012-13 Vendée Globe fleet… among them is that, although a Bruce Farr design completely dominated the previous race, only Verdier/VPLP and Owen-Clarke have new Imoca 60 designs competing this time round
Guillaume Verdier and Vincent Lauriot-Prévost (VPLP)
Seahorse: Your design partnership is from this race responsible for all but one of the new designs. Can you still recall Marc Guillemot’s rationale when, six years ago, he approached you jointly for your first Imoca 60…
Guillaume/Vincent: The idea of approaching our offices together was to mix fast offshore multihull experience from VPLP with Imoca 60 experience from Guillaume. Marc had identified that with boat speeds escalating, more and more multihull technology was becoming relevant to these boats – especially around foils and appendages.
SH: So for Imoca 60 projects you work together as one?
GV/VPLP: There is no written contract between us, but the past few years’ collaboration demonstrates just how complementary this approach has proved to be. Between our two offices we can cover every design aspect to a high level: hull shapes, rigs, structures, fluid analysis, composites, race modelling and meteo analysis and so on.
SH: Six of your designs will be at the start in Les Sables and they are all driven by top skippers. What are the main differences across the six?
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December 2012
FEATURES
Hangin’ on
CHRIS HILL looks at the seemingly spiralling capabilities of today’s line jammers and clutches
Super Series – Winner!
ROB WEILAND applauds as ALBERTO ROEMMERS’ team come good at the last
Two of two
To mark the start of the 2012 Vendée Globe, race veteran PATRICE CARPENTIER talks to Imoca 60 designer du jour, GUILLAUME VERDIER about this year’s line-up…
Case study
… While one of the designers trying to knock VERDIER off his perch, MERFYN OWEN, looks in detail at the background to his new Acciona
Golden oldies
Choose (your boat) wisely and you can more than get your money back… says NIC COMPTON
Big task – big tooling
VO65 hulls, AC72 wings, Wallycento moulds, a snapshot of the prodigious output of Persico
Tilting at the ultimate
Safran designer GUILLAUME VERDIER led the technical group responsible for skipper MARC GUILLEMOT’s highly advanced new Imoca spar
Putting on a brave face
Who’s been landed with the toughest job at AC34 – IVOR WILKINS reckons it’s the new CEO of the Cup’s management… STEPHEN BARCLAY
Can you afford not to… – Part 2
MIKE GASCOYNE expands on his rationale for toughening up offshore reliability, plus contextual framing from TIM SPRINGETT of McLaren F1
REGULARS
Commodore’s letter
MIKE GREVILLE
Editorial
ANDREW HURST Has Oracle’s unfortunate mishap just made America’s Cup 34 a whole lot more interesting?
Update
TERRY HUTCHINSON and Artemis start to unlock the puzzle, Sun journalist BOB HARRIS sees a potentially bright future for sailing and it was all going so well for JIMMY SPITHILL…
World news
‘Oldies’ line up for the Vendée, Spain takes the Class 40s (again), GREG ELLIOTT’s taste for speed, GIOVANNI SOLDINI stays busy, GLENN ASHBY falls foul of an AC45. DOBBS DAVIS, GIULIANO LUZZATTO, IVOR WILKINS, BLUE ROBINSON, PATRICE CARPENTIER
Rod Davis
Sailing is just like any other sport in terms of the coach’s job… only it isn’t!
ORC column
Those sail designers are getting very testing…
Design – Downscale, upmarket
VPLP and HERVE DEVAUX have moved into the ephemeral world of the C-Class with Hydros
RORC news
EDDIE WARDEN OWEN
Seahorse build table – Lean on me
Sail designer JEREMY ELLIOTT advances the cause for the Fractional Code Zero in IRC
Seahorse regatta calendar
Sailor of the Month
It’s an all-American tussle this time around