After the bombshell split in the British America’s Cup team, the most successful in the modern era, as the dust settles where do they go from here?
Billionaire-backer Sir Jim Ratcliffe settled his discussion on the future of the Ineos Britannia team by unilaterally removing CEO Sir Ben Ainslie, and announcing a new INEOS Britannia team under new CEO Dave Endean, which would retain the design and technology expertise of the Mercedes F1 Team under the guidance of Technical Director, James Allison.
Sir Ben, seemingly caught unawares by this move, hit-back with a promise to continue his America’s Cup challenge with a renamed team, Athena Racing, aligning with the British Women’s and Youth America’s Cup team, the Athena Pathway.
And he pointed out that Sir Jim’s plan raised significant legal and practical obstacles for them, underlining it with the comment (veiled threat) that this would play out in the coming days and weeks.
So, unless someone can get the two knights back round the table and thrash out a compromise, the jousting will begin.
In the arcane world of America’s Cup racing such nose-to-nose confrontations are not unknown and could be described as par for the course.
New Zealand AC team boss Grant Dalton, well known for his hard stance on anything that challenges his grip on his own team, as well as ensuring that the event conditions are firmly within his remit. He must be rubbing his hands at the prospect of the team that finally seemed to be getting it together as a realistic challenger, has now imploded.
Although he will not be so happy with the chaos their bickering could cause to the organisation of the 38th America’s Cup.
Also not happy will be the Royal Yacht Squadron Ltd, the branch of the illustrious Cowes yacht club, that hosted the original race in 1851, and is now the Challenger of Record, but finds itself with a choice of actual challenging teams, and possible legal battles ahead.
At this stage we do not know just how much money, time and effort, Sir Jim is willing to devote to this spat, having already announced he wanted additional sponsors, and given some of the other problems his various Sports Group organisations are facing.
He is juggling a Manchester United meltdown, a Mercedes F1 team that has struggled on and off the track, and just waved goodbye to its seven-time world champion to rivals Ferrari, and that the lacklustre INEOS Grenadier (former Sky) cycle team was looking for additional sponsors.
For Sir Ben it will be a case of back to the pre-INEOS days . . . having to live within a limited budget, and finding sufficient robust sponsorship to rebuild his America’s Cup team, without the Mercedes F1 state-of-the- art facilities and manpower to build on the gains made with the iteration of the AC75 at the 37th AC.
For Ratcliffe this is one of several sports projects that he has involved himself with, none of which have yet shown the same dominant success that he achieved in commerce.
The partnership with Ainslie, who dominated Olympic sailing, but needed almost unlimited funds to develop the British America’s Cup challnge, it seemed like the perfect match, both wanting the same outcome . . . Finally a British America’s Cup win.
But, as was always likely, the two huge egos have clashed and the fall-out looks likely to put that common goal beyond their reach.
