More golf time for pair who holed defence

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

After a weekend of bitter fallout, maybe it is not so surprising that Russell Coutts and Brad Butterworth bailed out of running the next America's Cup.

The telltale signs were there. Disputes with the old guard, long absences on the other side of the world, a kind of reticence as their crewmates back home grew more and more confused about their own futures.

The overwhelming public reaction, mostly anger, may have been too harsh.

Yachting is more profession than sport, where patriotism has been scrubbed from the sailor's vocabulary, and most go where the pile of money is highest.

It's their living.

But the guys' timing was off - Butterworth and Coutts could have left two months ago, the day after Team New Zealand won the Cup again.

But now Butterworth says they could not walk away from their old team without a new deal being done - Team New Zealand would have fallen apart.

No matter how or when they did it, the leaders would still be vilified for quitting a team which has become a national icon.

There is a definite split within the big black shed now about whether what Coutts and Butterworth did was wrong.

Some call them traitors, who asked the team to remain loyal then left.

Others say it was for the best, that it would have been worse having an unhappy leadership.

Maybe it all became too complicated.

Coutts and Butterworth are true competitive sportsmen - on the water, on the golf course - they like being outdoors.

Their decision to leave was apparently made on a golfing break on some foreign shores.

Perhaps they did not want to be chained to a desk, coercing sponsors for more dollars, running a cut-throat business like the America's Cup.

Or maybe they just wanted to sail again.

And then there is the money.

Breaking his vow of silence on radio yesterday, Butterworth maintained it was all about the business end of the deal.

He and Coutts could not accept the obligations the old trust and the sponsors had placed on the new Team New Zealand.

Increasingly the word is that the new regime wanted to start their defence with a clean slate.

They did not want to inherit the debts of the past campaign, supposedly somewhere around $5 million.

And it seems they wanted one major backer - rather than the Family of Five, who brought their own rules, like first right of refusal on additional sponsors.

Now they have their one-man band - and a very rich man in multi-billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli.

They will never have to worry about where the money for the next mainsail is coming from.

They will not have to lease out NZL32, the glory boat of the 95 victory, to the highest bidder to add money to the coffers.

They will not have to rely on red socks to buy a mast.

And they can probably get in a few more rounds of golf.