Skip to content

Oz Enters the Cup

Even a Kangaroo X-ing sign has more detail than the announcement of an Australian entry for AC34.

© Wally Beigh

With a month and a half to go before the close of the entry deadline for the 34th America’s Cup, an Australian challenger has emerged according to a press release from the ACEA. There weren’t any details on who is driving the challenge, nor on the challenging club, and a URL embedded in the release just leads to a domain name placeholder. There’s not much more we can tell you at this point. A statement attributed to "TEAM Australia" says that the effort has been underway for a year and that it "comprises a mix of experiences straddling technical backgrounds, business skills and passionate sailing enthusiasts."

All of these attributes would seem to be pretty helpful for an America’s Cup campaign, and not exactly noteworthy. The manner of the announcement is surprising — the team is missing a significant branding opportunity, and really, how hard is it to at least make a boilerplate website? If it had, in fact, been in the works for a year and TEAM Australia will be a viable challenger, it’s not walking the walk right now. It would be great to see Australia back in the America’s Cup, and an America’s Cup World Series event in Fremantle or Sydney Harbor would be pretty dynamite.

At this point, there’s a relative paucity of challengers for AC 34. The little teaser a few weeks back from ACEA about a potential Chinese entry may have been a solicitation more than anything; Hong Kong sailor Frank Pong, who chaired the China Team in ’07, is rumored to have said "no, thanks" already to overtures to enter. The two French challengers both say that the country can’t support two efforts, and Team New Zealand is not onboard yet. In order to have eight to 10 teams — Russell Coutts has sworn up and down that he expects there to be — there would likely have to be 11-13 teams that at least make it to the AC 45 stage to accomodate the inevitable attrition that seems to happen with these efforts. With six weeks left in the entry period, and Challenger of Record Vincenzo Onorato reporting that his Mascalzone Latino team has no sponsors, we’re starting to get a little concerned — hopefully it proves to be unfounded — that the Louis Vuitton Cup could end up being a two- or three-boat affair. Only time will tell.

Leave a Comment




After 13 years of cruising their 50-ft Flying Dutchman Reality eastward — all the way to the Red Sea — Vaughn and Sharon Hampton of San Francisco are ready to cruise the “correct way”: downwind across the Pacific.
Javier Martin is being held on suspicion of murdering American cruiser Don North and French sailor Jean-Pierre Bouahard in Panamanian waters.