KEY POINTS:
There must have been a deathly silence in Alinghi's headquarters when Emirates Team New Zealand and Louis Vuitton announced last week the new match racing series to be held on the Waitemata Harbour early next year, involving America's Cup teams.
Alinghi has a court case, a yet-to-be-completed 90-foot
trimaran likely to cost somewhere in the region of $15 million, and an ocean of bad will from America's Cup challengers.
Team New Zealand has a regatta involving many of the same players and which looks like it will achieve what Alinghi has not - racing and a regatta held in a carnival atmosphere rather than one of distrust, litigation and inactivity.
The most interesting factor now will be the reaction of Alinghi and its billionaire boss, Ernesto Bertarelli, to the Louis Vuitton Pacific Series.
Some conspiracy theorists have maybe gone a bridge too far - hinting that the series is an attempt to play 'the long game' and replace the America's Cup with a Louis Vuitton-backed regatta or series of regattas.
The involvement of Louis Vuitton is the factor behind the quickening of the pulses of the conspiracy theorists. The longtime sponsor of the America's Cup pumped something like ¬45 million into the event and has an annual turnover of ¬9 billion a year.
It is a powerful player and its falling out with America's Cup Management (Alinghi's wholly-owned management company) was one of the many negative side-effects of Alinghi's Cup regatta in Valencia last year.
At the end, a sad and angry Louis Vuitton announced its 25-year association with the Cup - the longest sponsorship in sport - was over. Gone, too, was the charismatic presence of Vuitton's Bruno Trouble - a respected and even revered man who in many ways personifies the modern America's Cup; an Olympian, an America's Cup sailor, the man who conceived and then ran the Louis Vuitton Cup, a sponsor.
Trouble is now jetting around the world talking to America's Cup syndicates, interesting them in the Pacific series; getting yachts back into the water; into racing, not regarding the seemingly interminable courtroom capers between Alinghi and BMW Oracle.
Small wonder, then, that the conspiracy theorists can see the tentacles of a takeover reaching out.
That might be a little too fanciful. The America's Cup, after all, retains a mystique and a presence all its own. Even mired in a court and weighed down further by the distended egos of two multi-billionaires, the Cup has survived and expanded past many issues over many years.
But sport has a way of moving on. Look at cricket and the Kerry Packer circus. That cataclysmic split seemed likely to ruin cricket. But instead it revitalised it and gave the purist part of the game - test cricket - a new lease of life as the one-day phenomenon saw the money roll in.
The Louis Vuitton Pacific Series is no revolution on its own. But there are now reports that US interests want to see an Atlantic Series. South Africa's Shosholoza has offered a base for an Indian Ocean Series.
With all due respect to those parts of the world, Europe is maybe the key in any breakaway calculations. Alinghi's backyard would be invaded indeed if Louis Vuitton was to set up a European regatta.
That could yet happen but, so far, the Vuitton-influenced event looks more like the Acts - the pre-Cup regattas sailed around the world and which were designed to take the America's Cup banner to different parts of the world. Points were awarded in each Act, with the overall points winner being crowned ACC champion (America's Cup Class).
These regattas could take the place of the Acts or they could exist alongside them.
But it would be foolish to rule out the possibility of major change sparked by the Pacific Series. If Alinghi and Oracle allow matters to get too far away on them, the face of the Cup could indeed start to change; Alinghi could be caught in the whirlpool of their own inaction and refusal to effect a compromise with Oracle.
That's why Bertarelli's response is so interesting now. He will likely respond behind the scenes - perhaps making America's Cup challenger syndicates juicy offers if they do not compete in the Pacific Series.
Alinghi have to somehow overcome this move and to right the perception of distrust that grew up when they unveiled a set of rules for the next regatta which were universally regarded as unusually self-serving and which sparked Oracle's court action.
Whatever happens, this has been a smart play by Team New Zealand and boss, Grant Dalton.
It is win-win; it could play a part in getting the courtroom-caught Cup back on the water or it could lead the sport into a new era.
Either way, it means sport, racing and a return to the basics that will resonate with sailors and fans alike - and not the unedifying spectacle of hired gun lawyers chipping away at technical details and the intricate meaning of words within the Deed of Gift.
Alinghi have said they will attend the Series if Team New Zealand drops their own court case against Alinghi.
Don't expect either to happen.
