Paul Lewis: The rumours that could shake up the America's Cup

Alinghi could be linking up with F1 team Red Bull for the next America's Cup. Photo / Getty

OPINION:

Alinghi's challenge for the 37th America's Cup is not only imbuing the next regatta with a large dose of credibility, it is moving the Cup closer to F1.

Literally. The yachting bars and gossip mills are alive with the possibility that Alinghi may be entering not just with Swiss billionaire owner Ernesto Bertarelli's millions but also with the reputed backing of F1 team Red Bull – also a sporting icon. That puts them on a par, at least, with Ineos Team UK and their connection with the Mercedes F1 team.

There's more – talk is also reaching receptive ears that Luna Rossa, not to be outdone, may be hooking up with another F1 giant, Ferrari. It's just gossip for now – but Alinghi's involvement was just bar talk for a long time too. Until it wasn't.

Alinghi themselves haven't said anything yet but scroll around the world's media and yachting media and the name Red Bull crops up more than once. The giant, foiling AC75s are powered by highly advanced technology and, just like F1, a small advantage in aerodynamics or hydrodynamics can mean big results.

The America's Cup has always been a technology race – never more so than now. The F1 connection is an intriguing development in a regatta still without a venue and, presumably, without the money to stage it yet.

Even the strict nationality rules – designed so Emirates Team New Zealand doesn't lose Kiwi sailors to competing teams – don't seem to have deterred Alinghi. Swiss sailors are racing in Sail GP and the T35s (foiling yachts) to be sailed this year in Switzerland, France and Italy; Alinghi was also the last champion in the now defunct Extreme Sailing Series (40-foot catamarans, a beefed-up version of the Tornados used in the Olympics).

One of their Sail GP sailors, Arnaud Psarophagis, even deputised for Peter Burling and Blair Tuke in that series when the Kiwi pair were preparing for the Olympics this year.

So Alinghi seem to have the sailors – and we are still waiting to hear if Burling and Tuke will re-sign with Team NZ. There's been some talk an offer from Alinghi was a possibility, even if the duo couldn't sail for them (nationality rules again). However, they could bring a whole heap of knowledge and experience with them in an advisory capacity. That still seems a long shot but…watch this space.

Now for a boat – and the talk has been for a long time that Alinghi have been sniffing round Team NZ and Luna Rossa to buy an AC75 from the last regatta – to begin getting to grips with sailing these foiling behemoths (and designing the next one).

That's probably what's behind another current rumour – this one a good joke – that Alinghi are putting money into the Team NZ defence. It may also be based on the fact Alinghi lent Team NZ millions ahead of their 2007 challenge in Valencia, when Alinghi were the defenders and Team NZ, as now, needed more money.

Yeah, but nah. A defender might help fund a challenger for the sake of the credibility of the regatta. But it's hard to think of a sailing universe where a challenger pays a defender: 'Tell you what, here's a boatload of cash; you just pay us back when we take the Cup off you.'

The rules are that no one is allowed to sail an AC75 until September – except for a new team (which Alinghi is and Luna Rossa, American Magic and Ineos aren't). That means some good catch-up work is available to Alinghi, even if they are allowed only 20 sailing days in an AC75.

There's been talk too of Alinghi's hook-up with Red Bull being a way to get round the nationality rules. The Red Bull racing team are actually based in the UK, which theoretically means Alinghi could then dip into a pool of British sailors. However, the likelihood is that this will be a Swiss challenge through a Swiss yacht club.

Whatever happens, Alinghi's involvement is good news for the Cup – certainly more interesting than the tedious lobbying and backroom manoeuvres surrounding efforts to force Team NZ to hold the next defence in Auckland.

The December 9 showdown at the Royal NZ Yacht Squadron seems fated to fail. The squadron seems unlikely to alter course, no matter what is decided or said on December 9. For years, Team NZ and the squadron have had an agreement that the team handles the defence management and funding and indemnifies the squadron from any financial burden.

In the rather murky backroom stuff that's been going down (on both sides), there have been confidential conversations, lobbying of interested parties, PR and spin aplenty and talk (from some quarters) of money to hold the regatta here – but somehow the cash never seems to materialise in any kind of physical form.

There's been talk of legal action, hints of defamation proceedings and other undesirables. It all calls to mind the 2007-2010 prolonged legal action between Oracle Team USA and Alinghi when Oracle took them to court, won the right to challenge one-on-one and eventually relieved Alinghi of the Cup – until Team NZ won it in Bermuda in 2017.

Those were dark days of ponderous delays, legal back-and-forth, finger-pointing, point-scoring and tedium which benefited no one except the lawyers. Let's hope we never see the like again.