Americas Cup Fiasco...

I agree it's Ernesto's fault. If he had not tried to create a club to be the COR none of this would of happened.

GGYC are American and are bound to chase any legal loop hole, it's part of their culture (if you can say America has a culture). The comments by Origin however are spot on. Once GGYC went to court Alinghi didn't want to know and used it as an excuse to delay things.

The only people who really understand what's happened are a handful inside the Alighi and GGYC camps and they aren't saying. What they do say needs to be taken with a shaker-full of salt.

Pretty much everyone outside ACM/Alinghi agrees the ACM33 protocol was deeply flawed.

The Oracle/GGYC action was conducted in a way with no regard to the predicament of teams who needed to raise corporate sponsorship (which is everyone except Alinghi and BMW Oracle). Until recently BMWO did not have support of the other teams and did not appear to be acting in a way that indicated a desire to settle outside court.

Now we move into more speculative statements. The uncertainty appeared to be causing team's sponsorship arrangements to unravel and prevent other teams from entering. ACM apparently had financial committments to Valencia based on the number of teams entering. Hence is seems likely that ACM needed to take a realistic view of the number of teams who could compete versus those committments and decided to pull the plug for 2009.

Meanwhile, but too late, GGYC did gain support of other teams and did appear willing to settle - but quite possibly well aware at that point that Alinghi would not, and hence angling to be seen as the white-hats in the situation.

The way this has developed has quite possibly stunted the development of the AC as a corporate-sponsored event for many years to come. How on earth can teams request multi-million budgets out from companies when there is no guarantee the event is even going to happen or when? It's quite possible this was Larry Ellison's intention all along, since he is able and apparently willing to fund an AC campaign out of his own loose change.

I think the comments from Team Origin are spot-on and consistent with the interpretation of events I've put forward. I believe the intrangience of both ACM and GGYC has brought about the demise of what looked likely to be a fantastic event, with the first serious British team in decades.

"Fabulous" compared to what?

Consider the VOR, which goes to great pains to ensure that sponsor's needs are met, including varying the port stopovers to match the core markets of team's sponsors.

Now consider the AC, which may or may not happen, at a date unknown, at a venue unknown, in a type of boat unknown.

So, Mr Marketing Director, where is your budget more likely to be spent? One thing business people tend to hate is uncertainty.

Louis Vuitton has decided the opportunity is resistable. So has Prada. UBS, which sponsored Alinghi, has announced it is as yet undecided.

Oh, and this fabulous catamaran spectacle, if it happens,  won't include a British team. Which, from my point of view, rather takes the gloss off things.

It's boring.........the sailing is secondary to the legal wrangling. Who cares if it's not run, I for one won't miss it.