Bully boy gets his comeuppance

Photo: Reuters

SWEET AS: Kiwi Oracle CEO Russell Coutts allows himself a wry grin after winning back the America's Cup.

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OPINION: I HAVE SPENT the past week locked in a hermetically-sealed studio watching often-confused people on skis and sleds throw themselves down mountains, so there may be some things in the non-Olympic world I have missed.

One thing seems obvious though. The biggest chill in the air was nowhere near Whistler or Vancouver, but in Valencia, where sanity was returned to the America's Cup, as the America's Cup was returned to America.

We can put away the arguments for another time. All that matters for the moment is that the man who may have done more damage to the integrity of the America's Cup than anyone in its history, is no longer in charge.

Ernesto Bertarelli, the bully billionaire from the country without a coastline, was finally separated from the silverware he shamed.

Few have put it better than Frank Leahy, a wise old Notre Dame football coach of the 1940s, who said this: "Egotism is the anaesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity."

If Frank has it right, Bertarelli won't be feeling very much pain right now because his ego led him to turn the America's Cup into just another arm of his business empire and his stupidity allowed him to believe no one would care enough to want to stop him.

The problem with the America's Cup is that there isn't a major sporting event in the world so open to abuse.

Teams have spent hundreds of millions of dollars building viable campaigns. Valencia spent hundreds of millions more creating a wonderful environment in which they might shine.

Over the decades, billions have been invested in an event which is completely dependent upon, not an independent governing body, but the integrity of the titleholder and the interpretation of a century-and-a-half-year-old document.

Bertarelli fell into the fatal trap of believing the Deed of Gift would protect him from a rogue challenge.

So there is enormous irony and, for those who still care about the cup, great joy, that it would instead provide the framework for his downfall.

Larry Ellison may end up being not much better. But for the moment he qualifies as the lesser of two evils and at least he understood that as long as it was in Swiss hands, the America's Cup was dying as an international event.

Some things won't change. The egos will always be there. That's part of the cup's appeal. But Bertarelli's naked indifference to tradition had to be addressed.

Having said that, are we now somehow expected to celebrate Russell Coutts, who has won the cup for three different nations and in three different roles? In some places, he is still considered "the great Swiss sailor". Yachting people probably think this clever. When Coutts and Brad Butterworth defected to Alinghi in 2000, they were famously, publicly and repeatedly branded as traitors.

It wasn't one of our country's finest moments. For a start, traitors they were not. At worst, they were mercenaries, but whatever your definition, you get the feeling that both men carry the scars of that time. Most of the rest of us have long moved on, of course. We've even forgiven Coutts enough to give him a knighthood, but having a ceremonial sword in the same room as Butterworth might be too much of a temptation for a bitter someone with a long memory.

So what next? In the coming weeks, Ellison will fill in a few of the important details. The where. The when. The who with.

San Francisco is a wonderful city, but not appropriate for an America's Cup so, in the short term, we may end up back where Alinghi took us, Valencia.

And Coutts has already shown he is restless. Ellison's CEO says he wants to get back on the boat; to lead an America's Cup campaign from the place he has always felt most comfortable, behind the wheel. So watch your back James Spithill.

In the meantime, the 33rd America's Cup goes in the book as a 2-0 win for one billionaire's rocket ship over another billionaire's slightly less spectacular rocket ship.

In no particular order, it was a victory for lawyers, for design, for Ellison and for Coutts.

What it most certainly was not, was a victory for yachting.

No one imagines the act of relieving Alinghi of the silverware will instantly turn the America's Cup into the warm and credible event it used to be.

But at least by repatriating the cup to the land of its birth, Coutts and Ellison have given it a chance of getting back on track.

eric.young@star-times.co.nz

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