Prada bloodied but unbowed

By Peter Calder

The Viaduct Harbour snoozed yesterday afternoon under a cloudless sky.

The public walkways, which boiled with humanity on Thursday night, were virtually empty and the millpond flatness of the water in the basin was broken only by the occasional water taxi, half full of the belatedly curious as they motored slowly past the syndicate HQs.

As they pulled close to the Prada base, their gazes seemed solemn, almost reverent. The previous night's jubilation gave way to a more sober acknowledgement that the Italians, beaten and bloodied, were unbowed. They had been - who would deny it? - noble adversaries in the regatta.

Inside the base, the shiny pressed-aluminium chairs were set up in immaculate rows for a press conference. The morning after the day before, the key personnel of the Prada challenge faced one last time the barrage of questions, the whirr of the motordrives.

Sitting in the middle of the row, at the centre of the table, was the man whose apparently bottomless pockets made the whole $100 million adventure possible - Signor Prada himself, Patrizio Bertelli.

He slumped slightly in his chair, and what seemed like a faint scowl creased his 53-year-old features. His legs jiggled impatiently as he listened or talked. Gracious to a fault, he submitted to interrogation. But it seemed clear he would rather be elsewhere.

His answers to questions were guarded, mostly suggesting a wait-and-see attitude. Asked, for example, what he would do differently next time, he dismissed the question as hypothetical.

"There is no great point in answering this question now because it doesn't make sense to think about the same boat in a different time and place and in different wind conditions. What has been is the past and now we will see what happens in the future."

What he was unequivocal about is that he will do it all again. Asked if he would seek sponsor partners, he was brief: he alone would bankroll the next challenge for which preparations are already under way.

There speaks the boss. And the boss was taking a close interest in questions directed at others.

The mumble of his personal interpreter, Anna Lazzari, was a steady drone as she translated in an urgent undertone, leaning close to his ear.

When skipper Francesco de Angelis picked up a microphone to answer, he would, often as not, have a short briefing from the boss before he answered, and at least one interjection was telling.

When de Angelis was asked why he thought the Italians had been such popular contenders, Mr Bertelli chipped in (and the skipper translated): "Mr Bertelli say he hope we will be as popular when we take the cup away."

The room erupted in goodhumoured guffaws, but Mr Bertelli was not smiling. His gaze was thoughtful, fixed on the back of the room and the summer of 2003.

Later, on the balcony, his staff served Pellegrini and he waved away any suggestion that he might be sad at the 5-0 loss. His disappointment is not as deep as his hopes were high, he says, through the interpreter.

"We have to be realistic. We had a strong desire to win the cup but we never thought we had a 50/50 chance. But I am never sad. That is not an emotion that belongs to me."

Rage then?

"Not rage either. I'm a rational person. I can analyse things with a cold mind. People think that because I am passionate, I am not thinking. But I am never irrational."

Journalists - even those without a word of Italian - might be sceptical about that, I suggest to him, having heard the thin walls shake as Mr Bertelli gave the team a healthy piece of his mind in post-race discussions.

"That wasn't anger," he says. "It was stimolo [Miss Lazzari translates it as stimulation, but it also means a goad or a spur]. They are very different things.

"In Italian the word for rage and rabies are the same word. Rage is for dogs."

Tuscans are passionate, he says, like the Irish - but not, he hastens to add, given to fisticuffs.

The formality of the team's relationship with the boss is legendary. Around the Prada base, Mr Bertelli is Signor Bertelli and never Patrizio. It is not a family, but a business, yet the man himself says he is something between an uncle and a tyrant.

"In all my companies, I am the boss but the others are not the workers. I always have a peer-to-peer relationship, not a hierarchical one. But on the other hand, I am not in the habit of delegating things. I am a hands-on CEO who works every day. It's the same with all my companies, including the America's Cup."

But Signor Bertelli? The concept does not translate, he explains. It is not as formal to call someone Signor as it is to say Mr in English.

"Less than 50 years ago, young people were not on a first-name basis in Italian with their parents. I'm not on a first-name basis with many of my staff."

What remains enigmatic about Mr Bertelli is "that" press release, delivered after Prada lost the third race in the cup finals.

Describing de Angelis's decision not to cover Team New Zealand at the first tack as "tactical suicide," he suggested the race had been given as a present to Team New Zealand skipper Russell Coutts, whose 38th birthday was on that day.

It landed on the desks of the world press minutes before the daily post-race press conference and the distress caused to de Angelis ("It didn't help that it came out before the press conference," he said) was evident. Mr Bertelli is unrepentant.

"The team knows me," he says. "They know whenever I do something there is a reason for it. So they don't need to wonder. If they have a problem they can knock on my door and ask me about it.

"The reason [for the press release] was simple. Here [at the Prada base, across the basin from the media centre] we had 80 or 90 Italian journalists in an endless discussion about Francesco's decision to go to the right rather than covering the black boat.

"I knew they were going to [file stories which would] openly criticise the team and the way they raced. So I decided to do the release to prevent the Italian journalists from going out with wild comments about that.

"But I couldn't issue a press release and tell them I was doing it to protect the team.

"I was very angry that we lost the race. But I was even more concerned about the comments the Italian press might do about that."

It sounds a lot like the Vietnam-era American logic of destroying villages to protect them, but Mr Bertelli is happy with the explanation. It worked, he says.

"They openly criticised me and they exalted the team so that was the result I was aiming at."

In the end, Mr Prada believes Prada excited the imagination of New Zealanders because they were a viable, professional challenge.

"People perceived the contribution we brought to the cup and thought the quality of our work improved the challenge. Having challengers who were unprofessional and disorganised would not have served well the first defence of the Cup in New Zealand.

"Also, New Zealand is a young country and enthusiastic about new things. Maybe New Zealand took us to their hearts because we are the newest kids on the block.

"We have just arrived and we are a novelty. We'll see what happens in the future."

I scan his face. He's not smiling.