Defection set team on course to disaster

By JULIE ASH

Team New Zealand have admitted that the management structure they adopted after the sudden departure of Russell Coutts and Brad Butterworth cost them the America's Cup.

A report reviewing the disastrous 2003 defence was released yesterday and claimed the single and most important cause of the 5-0 loss to Alinghi was the management structure set up after Coutts and Butterworth, who were to have led Team New Zealand, defected.

"The most critical weakness was that no one individual had a total overview of where the team was at and final responsibility for and authority over decision making," the report said.

Instead skipper Dean Barker was in charge of sailing, Tom Schnackenberg design and Ross Blackman administration. All three reported back to the board.

"The management structure adopted by a 'recovering' Team New Zealand was absolutely the right one at the time," the report said.

Those responsible for the structure were directors Peter Menzies, Ralph Norris, John Risley, Kevin Roberts along with Barker, Blackman and Schnackenberg.

The latter three have all been offered positions in the new set-up under managing director Grant Dalton.

"The structure we have put in place with a managing director answers the problems from the management point," Menzies said.

"In terms of the directors we are intending to have a full review."

Another key factor in the loss was the failure of the team's training boat NZL81, which suffered "crippling hull and deck structural damage" in December before its testing programme was even complete.

The cause of the failure, which is related to the compression from the load of the rig, has yet to be determined.

Menzies, who presented the report, said the failures did not occur on NZL82.

"Not being able to pinpoint why NZL81 was crippled undermined our belief in NZL82," Menzies said.

"Therefore NZL82 was never pushed during trialing. There was a genuine concern that if they pushed NZL82 too hard, it might fail and they might not have a boat to defend the cup.

"So come race day our boat was fast but not tested in the racing conditions that prevailed."

As a result NZL82 failed to finish in two of the five races.

In race one the boat took on a tremendous amount of water which had never been encountered before. The loads on the boom and rigging were more extreme than had ever been tested.

The broken mast in race four was the result of an aluminium tip cup breaking. The move to aluminium occurred six weeks earlier but only limited testing in strong conditions had taken place.

The fact Team New Zealand had become a design-led campaign through the lack of an overall leader was also a factor.

" The intellectual property we had was gone and we were faced with people starting virtually where Team New Zealand was in 2000," Menzies said.

"The design-led approach came from the commitment to get faster boats."

As a result, a lot of time and resources were spent investigating a number of revolutionary concepts, one of the which was the hull appendage.

Because of the complexity of the design the boats were almost a month behind schedule, which along with the structural problems on NZL81 reduced time for trialing.

Team New Zealand were not as prepared as they should have been.

"Alinghi were a formidable team and by the time of the cup were race hardened.

"But also the Alinghi funding base was secure from the outset and this freed them from the pressure of raising finance," the report said.

It was noted the team suffered from having an "inexperienced afterguard".

"The afterguard was the best we were able to put together for the defence," Menzies said.

The full report of the internal inquiry would not be released because it contained too much technical information which could be of use to rival syndicates.

File of disaster

Team New Zealand had a budget of $90 million compared with Alinghi's $120 million.

The Alinghi syndicate included six former Team New Zealand sailors in Russell Coutts, Brad Butterworth, Murray Jones, Simon Daubney, Dean Phipps and Warwick Fleury.

NZL82 failed to finish two of its five races. It withdrew from race one after water poured on board and the boom broke, and in race four when the mast collapsed. Tactical blunders cost Team New Zealand in two other races - two and three.