Sailing: BMW joins race for America's Cup
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Your support makes all the difference.Juan-Pablo Montoya and Ralf Schumacher are likely to receive some invitations to go sailing during the northern hemisphere winter after BMW launched itself into the world of the America's Cup here yesterday. The German motor manufacturer is teaming up with one of the world's richest men, Larry Ellison, to create Oracle BMW Racing just as the software company gears up for the launch ceremony of its two new boats in Auckland, New Zealand, on Friday.
Ellison is believed to have committed over £54m to taking the Cup back to his home town of San Francisco and Karl-Heinz Kalbfell, BMW's senior vice-president for group marketing, refused to say how much more his company is contributing, except that it would be a lot less than that. It is believed to be £10m.
What is clear is that the budget has been put together with help from all sections of BMW cars, including the British-produced Mini, in order to have equal ranking on the side of the boat and on the sails. And he had no qualms about having plumped for an American competitor while at the same time turning down approaches from Germany's Illbruck team, now renamed Pinta and put on hold because of lack of funds.
He also side-stepped questions about whether any quiet words had been spoken over the matter of Ellison's determination to steer his own boat. That one was defused by the British-born sailing operations manager, John Cutler, who said that Ellison's overwhelming desire to win would lead to the right decisions being made. In tight situations Peter Holmberg would be on the wheel, when it was "stable", that is if they were winning comfortably, he could take over.
Kalbfell was also non-committal about the future. Yes, they were in it for the long term, but they would review everything at the end of the campaign next February. Yes, they were looking at broader involvement, just as they have with golf, but no specific events were on the table.
Meanwhile, Holmberg did not see the British challenge as a major threat. He expected the last challengers, Prada of Italy, fellow-Americans OneWorld of Seattle, and Alinghi of Switzerland, skippered by two-time cup winner and Team New Zealand defector Russell Coutts, to join him in the semi-final of the Louis Vuitton Cup elimination series, which starts in October.
That will not worry the British, happy to be underdogs and happy, too, to launch at last the first of their two new boats yesterday from their base in Halsey Street, Auckland.
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