Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Craig McCaw's Bad Luck Continues-In end, OneWorld winds up windless

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Dec 2002 02:26:47 -0500

Craig McCaw's Bad Luck Continues-

In end, OneWorld winds up windless

The wind — and the wins — just kept slipping through their fingers.

It happened yesterday, when Seattle's OneWorld Challenge nailed the start and charged
ahead of archrival Oracle, looking like
they had finally put the pieces together for a semifinal win in the race for the America's
Cup — before disaster struck.

And in a greater sense, it happened throughout this regatta, as the spiffy blue boats with
a white bird on the bow and an
environmental mission in mind blew away the competition early on, then faded,
inexplicably, into the New Zealand summer sunset.

For the crew of OneWorld, yesterday's coup de grace by Oracle — a 1-minute, 4-second
victory capping a 4-0 series sweep —
was a soul-killer: The kind of defeat you don't forget in this lifetime, or any other.

Especially coming as it did, once more, at the hands of an unpredictable wind shift that
left Seattle crewmen beating their heads in
sheer frustration.

Midway through a race that OneWorld had started flawlessly and lead around the first three
marks, the boats headed downwind
for the second time. Oracle, desperate for a favorable puff to get back in the race, swung
wide left. Consensus at the time was
that the other side of the course was stronger. So rather than covering tightly, OneWorld,
skippered by Aussie veteran Peter
Gilmour, let Oracle go.

Again.

Disaster ensued — Oracle got the miracle breeze it was looking for, and rode it all the
way to a healthy lead at the bottom mark.

Again.

Alas, it happened to a Seattle-based skipper already under the microscope by some parts of
the sailing fraternity. If all the world's
armchair yacht skippers are to be believed, five-time Cup veteran Gilmour has thrown away
the match-racing playbook in favor of
a more free-wheeling, we-read-the-shifts-better-than-you do gambler's persona.

In recent weeks, it has universally failed to bring home the goods. Call it bad luck,
stubborn stupidity, or whatever you choose, but
give the man this: Gilmour was every bit the gambler when this regatta started. He stuck
with his guns.

As he has said on many occasions, when it works, you're a genius. When it doesn't, and the
wind goes the other way, you're an
idiot. Unfortunately, the last wind OneWorld will see in this event went the other — and
Oracle, its own short-lived design-data
scandal fizzling into submission, is riding it into the next round.

Yesterday's race was a microcosm of OneWorld's once-promising America's Cup campaign. In
the beginning, the team could do
no wrong, guessing every wind shift right and beating everyone in sight for an 8-0 record
in the opening round robin.

Ominous cracks in the carbon-fiber armor appeared in the second round robin, where the
field got faster and OneWorld crew's
got sloppier; the Seattle team slipped to 5-3.

Reality struck hard in the quarterfinals, where Larry Ellison's Oracle boat got itself —
and its fragile pecking order behind the
wheel — straightened out just in time to shellac OneWorld, then sailing in USA-65. It was
the beginning of the end for the group
flying the Seattle Yacht Club burgee.

Next came the true ugliness, as the team founded by Craig McCaw to take the high road in
Cup affairs was dragged, mid-regatta,
into the courtroom to fend off more slime slung by ex-employee Sean Reeves — aided and
abetted by the team's next two
opponents, Prada and Team Dennis Conner. In the end, both foes were beaten on the water,
but major damage was inflicted off it:
OneWorld carried a permanent, one-race penalty into later rounds.

It's impossible to guess just how much of a psychological burden that became on the crew;
how much it might have flavored the
on-water decisions of Gilmour, talented Aussie helmsman (and likely future Cup star) James
Spithill, and Seattle sailing veteran
Charlie McKee — the team's collective afterguard.

It's easier to acknowledge how little — thankfully — the penalty wound up affecting the
results on the water. If there is any
justice in this America's Cup, it is this: In the end, OneWorld wasn't foiled by lawyers
or beaten by the dread penalty. They simply
were out-designed and out-sailed — beaten by what they considered to be their own
strengths.

The Laurie Davidson-designed USA-67 and USA-65, as promised, came out of the box faster
than any boat in the water. But
both the boats and their designers would prove far less adept at designing on the fly to
match speed gains of their opponents. By
the time it ended, Oracle's USA-76 was slightly, but appreciably, faster — upwind and
down. Did OneWorld show too much, too
fast?

The team's perfect record in the early rounds was nice. But it'll be a fading memory by
the time Switzerland's Alinghi — which is
widely believed to have speed tricks still in its quiver — likely puts Oracle to the sword
and sails against Team NZ in the
America's Cup final.

OneWorld's future, meanwhile, is about as predictable as a mid-afternoon breeze off
Rangitoto Island. McCaw wasn't making any
hasty decisions yesterday — other than giving his team a week to enjoy the holidays on
Kiwi beaches. Big decisions are expected
by the time they return.

Few people could blame the newly cash-strapped McCaw, now also dealing with the untimely
death of a brother, for bowing out
of this "gentleman's game." Some hope lingers that relatively well-heeled co-owner Paul
Allen might be talked into another run —
especially if the Cup is won by Alinghi and the next defense moves to Europe, where Allen
likes to work, play and park his yachts.

It's an open question. But for OneWorld, this America's Cup is a closed book. The blue
boats took the start gun in 34 races and
crossed the finish line first 21 times — all too few of them in races that really counted.

Years from now, the team will reminisce over what was by all accounts a noble campaign.
They'll be commended for keeping
cool heads even as the boiling water rose around their necks. Perhaps they'll take pride
in knowing they awoke a slumbering
passion in the Northwest sailing world.

But that wasn't on this group's Christmas-shopping list for Auckland.

From the start, OneWorld lived for, and by, that sweet spinnaker-filling breeze that came
from nowhere and, like magic, turned
their free-ranging gambles into sailing prophecies. Yesterday and well into the future,
they'll be dying by it.

Seattle Times-

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/