Davidson denies passing Team NZ secrets to OneWorld

By WAYNE THOMPSON

The former lead designer of the Team New Zealand America's Cup yachts, Laurie Davidson, has denied allegations that he passed on the team's design secrets to his current employer, the Seattle-based OneWorld Challenge.

Mr Davidson said he did not steal designs from other boats and had made no use of design documents that Auckland lawyer Sean Reeves alleges came from the 2000 campaign champions.

Mr Davidson was one of five former Team New Zealand design experts who Mr Reeves alleges were involved in passing on secret information to the 2003 American challenger.

Responding to the allegations at the OneWorld base in Auckland this morning, Mr Davidson wore the shirt of his new team, with its Seattle Yacht Club monogram, and the white belt of the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron.

His team's bosses stood beside him at the press conference and admitted "some mistakes" in holding measurement certificates of Team New Zealand boats.

Chief executive Gary Wright apologised "for the disrepute" the syndicate's court case with Mr Reeves had brought to the America's Cup but wanted to set the record straight.

A former Team New Zealand member, Mr Reeves worked for OneWorld in Auckland for 11 months from April 2000 as its adviser on America's Cup rules.

He alleges Mr Davidson brought to OneWorld Challenge dozens of colour photographs of tank towing tests and models at the Wolfson Unit in Britain from the 2000 Team New Zealand campaign. He said this breached America's Cup protocol. A further breach occurred, he said, by Mr Davidson having at OneWorld Challenge copies of the measurement certificates for the Team New Zealand black boats, NZL-57 and NZL-60.

But Mr Davidson said there was no advantage in having either the photo album or measurement certificates. His office was "a hell of a mess with documents strewn around." After August 2000 he found in his office an album of photographs belonging to Team New Zealand showing models during tank testing. These gave no useful information, he said.

While walking down the street to take the album to the Team New Zealand office, he called in to the OneWorld office. He said he put the album down on a coffee table for 20 minutes and that was when Mr Reeves saw them. They were returned to Team New Zealand a short time later.

Regarding the measurement certificates, Mr Davidson said they were brought into the office by Mr Reeves. They played no part in OneWorld's designs and were forgotten about. Mr Davidson said he rejected Mr Reeves' claim that it was likely that work on Team New Zealand yachts gave rise to hull lines plans used in the August 2000 design package for the One World Challenge yacht.

Mr Davidson said he did not steal, would not steal, and did not need to steal designs off other boats.

"I could produce lines drawings drawn for Team New Zealand yachts from memory and could guarantee [their accuracy]within a matter of centimetres."

The lines plans were all different from that for the Team New Zealand boats. One boat would have looked similar to a non technical person like Mr Reeves."But in my opinion the boats were better than Team New Zealand's."

Mr Wright said the syndicate stood behind its team members who were "men of integrity and of good standing in the America's Cup world."

He said the syndicate had made some mistakes but believed these to be minor and not beneficial to its boat's design process. That would be decided by the America's Cup Arbitration Panel in four to six weeks.

Mr Reeves' allegations are in a counterclaim against a writ against him by OneWorld Challenge. The writ accuses him of trying to sell $6 million of its secret design and technical plans to rival syndicate Oracle Racing through old friend Chris Dickson.

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