Three-match America's Cup cat fight the hot tip

The America's cup will be contested next year but in a best- of-three match between Oracle and Alinghi in catamarans.

That's the belief of Washington Post journalist Angus Phillips, who has covered the cup for 25 years.

Phillips says if rival billionaires Ernesto Bertarelli of Switzerland, and Larry Ellison of the United States cannot resolve their dispute over the cup, they must be governed by the Deed of Gift, which requires the holder of the cup to accept a challenge from any established yacht club from a foreign nation and meet that challenger on the water within 10 months. The deed loosely describes permissible vessels for the event, capping their length at 90 feet.

Given the failure to compromise, Ellison's Oracle team claims it has no choice but to force Alinghi into a head-to-head match on the appointed date in the fastest 90ft sailboats either side can conjure, which in the current age means big catamarans.

Last week, Ellison's Golden Gate Yacht Club announced it was giving up efforts to negotiate a settlement and was proceeding with design and development of a 90ft cat and a team to race it. The expectation is Alinghi will respond with its own 90-footer and the two will square off in a best-of- three series for yachting's oldest and most prestigious prize off Valencia.

The dispute started when Bertarelli was found to have broken cup rules by selecting a challenger that failed to meet basic requirements of the game. Spotting the error, the Golden Gate club took Bertarelli to court, where a judge tossed out the phony challenge from the hastily assembled Club Nautico Espanol de Vela and put Ellison's well- established GGYC in its place as official challenger of record.

Alinghi now seeks a rehearing, for which the sides will convene this week in Albany, New York state.

Alinghi promises to appeal to higher courts if it is rebuffed again.

Oracle spokesman Tom Ehman expects the appeal to be thrown out with the teams ordered to meet sometime this year, perhaps as early as July, maybe in October, depending on when the judge decides the 10-month clock started ticking.

A catamaran race would echo the court-ordered 1988 challenge by New Zealander Michael Fay against San Diego's Dennis Conner in which Fay's huge monohull was pitted against Conner's far swifter catamaran in a one-sided non-event Conner easily won.