Should Americans represent the USA ?

It is amusing to see the BMW Oracle boat being called a boat that represents the USA, yet both the CEO and the helmsman were both non Americans.
If Yachting is a sport where a boat is flying a country's ensign should it not have that country's citizens as crew and shore crew ?
Strange to see the USA media giving Coutts his full title, we Kiwis tend to have long memories when loyalty to country seems to be forgotten

Didn't the Kiwis' hire Ben Ainslie?

.....who cares.

This was the sailing eqivalent to the Jim Rose Circus pay your dollar and gawp.

kiwi66, maybe it should go the nationality route, but then the kiwis would
have all the sailors, and none of the money, if you took it all the way
through to sponsors and funding.
The AC is supposed to be a competition between Yacht Clubs, and as far as I
am concerned, if you didn't let someone be a member of a YC because of
their nationality, that would make you a xenophobe/racist, and not someone
I'd want to sail against.

I remember 'Loyal' as a motto, the government support of it, and the death
threats that the kiwis who went to Alinghi received.

Did you miss the bit where I (and the DoG) said Yacht Clubs? Of course a YC
comes from a country. In AC 32 though, there were several YCs from Italy,
who gets to be the Italian team, or is it all of them?

I'd also say the vast majority of kiwis who know the conditions that were
presented to RC and BB after AC 31 would understand how the situation was
not acceptable to them, and would not have allowed them to make a
successful defense. It might not be acceptable behaviour to you, but you can
understand why it was not just the money that took them away from TNZ.