Sean Reeves - the Cup's outcast

TONY WALL talks to the man who's rocked the boat at the America's Cup village.

It is perhaps not surprising that Sean Reeves has become an America's Cup pariah. This is a man who admits to luring away the heart and soul of Team NZ's winning America's Cup crew to a new American syndicate backed by megabucks.

A man who, it is alleged, became a double-agent by trying to sell $6 million of the syndicate's design secrets to a rival American campaign through old friend Chris Dickson.

A man who denies any wrongdoing but has named five New Zealanders - men he recruited - who he alleges took confidential design and technical information with them when they jumped ship.

Reeves sees himself as a little Kiwi battler fighting powerful forces within the America's Cup, which he says is clouded by politics and dodgy dealings.

He denies he took Team NZ design plans with him to the Seattle-based syndicate, One World Challenge, or that he tried to sell One World's secrets to rivals Oracle Racing after he was bought out of his contract for a reported $1.3 million.

"I'm not 007," the 40-year-old told the Weekend Herald this week. "I'm not James Bond. I don't have the ability to do all the things they're claiming."

Reeves' response to being sued by One World was to throw mud around, and he says it has stuck. He claims he can prove the allegations he has made against his former Team NZ comrades, who he named in court documents filed in the US district court in Seattle this month.

Reeves projects a nice-guy image, but is not modest. He claims that without him, Seattle telephone billionaire Craig McCaw's One World "would not exist today".

If Reeves is feeling the pressure of being sued by a syndicate backed by one of the world's richest men, he does not show it.

When the Weekend Herald called at his large, two-storey Devonport villa, he seemed relaxed in bright orange polo shirt and shorts, making up a children's tennis draw with his American wife of two years, Melanie.

Reeves, a commercial lawyer, is training to become a professional tennis coach. He has chosen the new career path because he believes his America's Cup career - he had hoped to be involved for another 20 years - is finished.

He says the America's Cup community is relatively small and his previously impeccable reputation is "in tatters" after One World accused him of trying to sell its secrets.

While Reeves may not be known to most New Zealanders, he has a long list of yachting achievements and knows most of the big names of New Zealand sailing.

He refers fondly to old friend "Dicky" (Dickson), the late Sir Peter Blake is "Blakie" and he, of course, is "Reevsy". How did it all start for the man who is at the centre of what he describes as the biggest scandal to hit the America's Cup in 10 years?

Reeves was raised in a Catholic family of six in New Plymouth. His grandfather, St Leger Reeves, was a lawyer for 60 years, his father, Manning, has been practising law for 50.

He attended Francis Douglas Memorial College. Skiing was his first passion, but at the age of 8 he began crewing a Sunburst with his older brother in the rough seas off the New Plymouth coast. It scared him.

At 15, he teamed up with a local sailor to race in the two-man 470 Olympics class and in 1980, aged 19, he was named as reserve for the Moscow Olympics.

After New Zealand boycotted the Games, Reeves was asked by Dickson to crew with him in the Laser 2 class at the World Youth Championships in Texas.

They won, and it was the beginning of a successful four years for the pair. "We had great years together." Reeves describes travelling the world on shoestring budgets supplemented by the odd sports grant and hanging out with up-and-coming yachties such as Russell Coutts and David Barnes.

"We were like a travelling New Zealand yachting family."

Reeves and Dickson were aiming for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and won medals at three pre-Olympic regattas, but the relationship fell apart shortly before the big event.

Reeves puts it down to spending too much time together on the ocean in a 4.7m boat. They burned each other out, he says, plus Dickson "became more and more demanding and uptight".

Reeves teamed up with Peter Evans and beat Dickson to win the 470 spot for New Zealand at the Olympics. They finished out of the medals.

Reeves suggests that Dickson's bitterness at missing out on the position and ongoing animosity between the pair might have prompted Dickson to claim that Reeves offered to sell him One World's design information.

After finishing law school at Canterbury University, Reeves moved to Auckland and began practising commercial and property law.

He says in 1993, Coutts asked him to join Team NZ as a rules adviser.

"He said, 'We've had dreadful problems with the rules'. There was 'glassgate' in 87, the big-boat, catamaran debacle of 88 and the bowsprit protest of 92. It seemed New Zealand was always on the losing end of the rule book and Russell said to me, 'We have to turn this around or we'll never win the America's Cup'."

As rules adviser, Reeves had to run constant audits of the operation, liaising closely with sailors and designers.

He had to become familiar with a raft of rules and regulations, including the Deed of Gift, International Sailing Federation rules, the umpires' handbook and the highly technical America's Cup class rule.

Reeves says New Zealand had been "too cute" with the rules in the past. "Our mission statement was: 'Let's be squeaky clean'."

Reeves was surprised by the politics and rules violations that were endemic throughout the America's Cup.

"You can cheat, but ultimately you'll be found out," he says. "People talk. Even now I'm learning about what went on during the last Cup."

Reeves paints a rosy picture of his time with Team NZ, saying he gained "Blakie's" trust while sharing an office with him.

But one Team NZ insider says Reeves fell out with the team a month before the finals in 2000 because he was "loose-lipped. From then on he was an outcast," the source says. "Coutts wanted him fired but Blake wouldn't agree."

Reeves says he left the team when his contract ended at the end of the finals series because he had no interest in working with the new management regime, which at that stage was expected to be Coutts, Brad Butterworth and Tom Schnackenberg. He did not believe they had the business acumen required.

Before leaving, Reeves helped to draft the protocol for the 2003 cup. He went back to practising law in Devonport and was then asked by Gary Wright, soon-to-be chief executive of One World, to join the new syndicate backed by McCaw.

Reeves had never heard of the billionaire, but came on board and then helped to lure a clutch of top sailors and designers from Team NZ.

Reeves claims One World relied entirely on him for advice and guidance and he refers to the syndicate as "my baby".

Wright says: "Garbage". Reeves had no part in some of the recruitment and only met McCaw briefly once. Wright says McCaw does not concern himself with Reeves, and would not know him if he saw him on the street. "He's a distraction that Bob [Ratcliffe, PR man] and I deal with."

Reeves says he left One World because its previously streamlined sailing and design teams suddenly "exploded" upwards and there were too many people involved.

He also claims he was shocked by the intellectual property violations being committed by members of the syndicate and the unwillingness of bosses to do anything about it when he approached them.

One World's response is that it was Reeves who brought the secrets with him.

Reeves says that at one stage it was "a bit of a running joke" that One World had so much of other syndicates' information.

"We had not only caught up to Team NZ - we had passed them."

He says that unless Team NZ does something about it, the Cup will leave these shores, and he does not want to see that happen.

Reeves reckons One World should never have sued him because "they forgot to check for their own skeletons".

He says the whole saga is bad for the America's Cup, bad for this country.

"That's what's so sad when you look at who's involved in this scandal. They're all New Zealanders - we grew up together and travelled the world driving round in Kombi vans. Now it's New Zealanders who are wrecking the America's Cup."

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