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Jun 21, 2004

Just over a year after winning the America's Cup from Team New Zealand Alinghi looks set to lose its victorious skipper.

Russell Coutts is poised to quit the Swiss syndicate and is believed to be considering joining another team.

A difference in opinion over management appears to be behind the rift.

Coutts is in the United States with Alinghi, which is competing in the UBS trophy, but he is not sailing.

The New Zealander said he and the syndicate's head, Ernesto Bertarelli, were in mediation over America's Cup rule 13.12, which restricts sailors from moving from one team to another.

The result of that mediation could free Coutts to join another syndicate.

"Differences in management direction have developed. We're close to resolving them," Coutts said.

Coutts said he's still part of the Swiss team, although he wouldn't discuss the differences.

"Anything's a possibility right now," he said. "Hopefully, we'll reach a resolution. We'll wait and see."

Alinghi has two other helmsmen, Peter Holmberg, who met with the team for the first time a week ago after signing last November, and Jochen Schuemann.

Holmberg was helmsman for Saturday's two races in the UBS Trophy in which Alinghi beat Oracle, the San Francisco-based syndicate that lost to Alinghi in the challenger finals in 2003 in Auckland.

Bertarelli said he asked Coutts twice whether he would sail Saturday, on the dock and later in a chase boat that followed the competitors on the course, and Coutts "decided he didn't want to helm".

So, Bertarelli said, Coutts will be off the boat for the remaining 10 races in the UBS Trophy, a two-team competition which ends next Saturday.

"We hoped that Russell Coutts would be helming and leading us to victory at the UBS Trophy today," Team Alinghi said in a statement.

"He clearly decided not to helm. We therefore have decided to rely on Peter Holmberg and Jochen Schuemann to helm for us during the rest of the week."

Coutts said he told the Alinghi syndicate last month that he wouldn't be at the helm this week because he and Bertarelli are in mediation over rule 13.12.

"That's the reason why I can't helm this week," Coutts said. If he sailed with Alinghi, "then it may restrict me from sailing with someone else if I don't reach an agreement."

The rule states that anyone who sailed for one syndicate within 18 months of the first race of the America's Cup final round, scheduled for 2007, cannot sail for another syndicate unless all the teams in the competition agree.

Coutts was at the helm for the last three America's Cup winners, sailing for his native country in 1995 and 2000 before accepting a lucrative offer to sail for Switzerland in 2003.

He was 14-0 in those three best-of-nine competitions. Crewmate Dean Barker steered the Kiwi boat for the clinching race in 2000.