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Billionaires battle for challengers' title Posted: Thursday January 09, 2003 7:04 PMAUCKLAND (Reuters) -- The America's Cup challengers' series final between Alinghi and Oracle BMW Racing is shaping up as a billionaires' battle that will pit a bookish young European against a brash United States software entrepreneur. On one side at the starting line in the Hauraki Gulf on Saturday will be Swiss biotechnology heir and Alinghi head Ernesto Bertarelli, a Harvard graduate who has become known on Auckland's syndicate row as "the baby billionaire." On the other side will be Oracle, the team built from scratch by the larger-than-life Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison. Bertarelli, the 37-year-old chief executive of Serono, Europe's second largest biotechnology firm, is navigator aboard Alinghi and has steered his team through the long Louis Vuitton Cup challengers series that began in October. Quiet and polite, Bertarelli began assembling his first America's Cup challenge not long after Team New Zealand's successful Cup defense in 2000. He shocked the America's Cup world when, after a chance meeting with Team New Zealand skipper Russell Coutts, he lured Coutts to his $55 million challenge. Coutts was joined by tactician Brad Butterworth and senior New Zealand crew Warwick Fleury and Simon Daubney, adding more invaluable local knowledge to Bertarelli's team. Coutts and Butterworth led Team New Zealand to their 1995 America's Cup win and then their successful defense in 2000. The 40-year-old Coutts, unbeaten in America's Cup racing, is also an Olympic champion and won the world match-racing title in 1992, 1993 and 1996. Bertarelli rounded out his star-studded, multinational crew with three-times Olympic gold medallist Jochen Schuemann of Germany as Coutts' back-up helmsman. Bertarelli is an accomplished sailor in his own right and won the 2001 12-metre and Far-40 world championship titles as helmsman, as well as the Bol d'Or multihull title three times. Alinghi were the clear favorites before the regatta and have justified that favoritism since the first challengers' round robin began on October 1. "Our goal was to come out fast in round robin one and just keep moving forward," Alinghi's design coordinator Grant Simmer said. Their success so far has mirrored Bertarelli's approach to business, with cool Swiss efficiency backed up by state-of-the-art design. In contrast, Ellison has kept a much higher profile and his first Cup challenge has been far more turbulent. Deep pockets Oracle's estimated $95-million budget was by far the biggest of any of the nine challengers who lined up in October. Ellison, one of the richest men in the world, has funded most of it out of his own deep pockets. He also bought an impressive team of sailing experts, including America's Cup veterans Paul Cayard and John Cutler, multiple world maxi and world match-racing champion Chris Dickson and current match-racing champion Peter Holmberg. But Cayard was sidelined even before the challengers' series began amid reports of personality clashes. Dickson, Ellison's long-time sailing partner, soon followed. Oracle had an indifferent start to the regatta and Ellison replaced skipper Holmberg with the sometimes abrasive New Zealander Dickson early in round robin two. One of Dickson's first moves was to force Ellison off the boat and recall Holmberg to the helm. The tactic worked as Dickson revitalized Oracle's challenge, while boat designer Bruce Farr at the same time worked to refine Ellison's boats. Ellison, like Bertarelli, is a successful sailor in his own right and raced his maxi yacht Sayonara around the world for many years. In 1998, he won the disastrous Sydney-Hobart race in which six yachtsmen died in appalling conditions.
Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. |
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