By SUZANNE McFADDEN
Bruno Trouble raises an arm above his head and clicks his fingers to summon the waitress. He wants to pay for the seared tuna, antipasto platter and espressos now. The waitress scurries to the table in the cafe on the edge of Auckland's bustling Viaduct Basin; its bar a familiar haunt of America's Cup sailors. Trouble's custom is most welcome here.
Twenty years ago, the bespectacled Frenchman was not clicking his fingers at anyone. The nearest Trouble got to seared tuna was a Filet-O-Fish, as he waited in line every day at the McDonald's in Newport, Rhode Island, to feed the rest of his French America's Cup crew. The 1983 French challenge was virtually destitute, and Trouble, a young lawyer and skipper of France III, was dipping into his own pocket to pay the team's way.
Today, as Louis Vuitton's representative in the America's Cup, he has a few more francs in his wallet, and is still as generous with them. I arrive at the cafe to have a coffee with Trouble, who I have known and worked with for seven years, but he has only just ordered his lunch. When the tuna arrives at the table, he takes one mouthful then pushes the plate and his fork at me and insists I share the meal with him. It is hard to turn Trouble down, even on a full stomach.
Trouble has a bear-like charm about him. He loves children, but he's well aware he sometimes frightens them with his exuberance, grabbing their hands and almost shaking their arms off. Whenever we meet, I am wrapped in a hug and swung off the ground. He can be fun, but at times, cantankerous.
The 57-year-old exudes French chic in his own inimitable style: a penchant for pink shirts, perhaps like those clothing habits of other America's Cup legends, such as Sir Peter Blake's red socks, and Baron Bich's natty white gloves.
"I do not know why I like pink shirts. I cannot explain why I like freesias so much either," Trouble shrugs in his dramatic way.
He wends his way along the Auckland waterfront on his shiny new BMW motorscooter, beeping its horn at the traffic, all the way to his home away from home in Remuera. He buzzes around on a similar bike on the much busier boulevards of Paris.
As much as he is a Frenchman, Trouble takes every opportunity to talk of his love of New Zealand. "I think I have become more patriotic than a Kiwi," he bellows. He and his family, including two school-age sons, moved to Auckland in January and it is here that he has chosen to build "the boat of his life" with wife Melanie.
He would be quite happy to see the America's Cup stay in New Zealand, even though he has tried to claim the cup for France three times and failed. There is also the small matter that among the nine challengers who start racing in seven weeks is another French team, which includes his eldest son Romain.
You have to believe Trouble when he says he wants what is best for the America's Cup. He has a passion for the world's oldest sporting trophy that rivals Dennis Conner's - they are the only two men who have been part of every challenge in the past 20 years.
Trouble is a proud historian of the Auld Mug and all its battles, and there's no other place he would rather be than right in the middle of them, especially when the going gets dirty - as it inevitably does.
"It helps that I was a lawyer before all this," he laughs. "We are surrounded by them now - in October there will be more lawyers in town than sailors.
"It is all part of the America's Cup, and I don't worry about it. But for newcomers it must be difficult to understand all that goes on off the water, unless you read all the history. This is not your normal sports event."
Trouble is often stretched to become a mediator between syndicates, no more so than at the daily press conferences, where he sits in the middle of the skippers' table and has been known to break up emerging fracas.
He was a young lawyer in Paris, following the career of his father and grandfather before him, when he answered the call of the America's Cup. In 1977, Trouble was asked by Bic pen billionaire Baron Marcel Bich to help to drive his boat, France I. But it was a short campaign for Trouble, and one that almost cost him his life.
"It was a windy and cold day and I was steering. The running backstay winch exploded and flew into my side, like a 20kg bullet. It cut through everything and broke seven ribs. I spent two weeks in hospital peeing blood. I truly thought I was going to die."
In 1980, he returned as skipper of France III in Newport, and they reached the challenger final, losing to Australia. But it occurred to Trouble that the challengers were not united enough in their bid to wrest the cup off the Americans - the challenger series needed some serious cohesion, organisation and money. So he approached a friend at Louis Vuitton to convince the leaders of the French luggage empire they should sponsor the challengers.
"I thought Louis Vuitton had a lot in common with the event - they started up in 1854, the America's Cup in 1851. Rockefeller and Vanderbilt, two of the great names of the cup, were loyal clients of Vuitton," Trouble says.
Louis Vuitton agreed, and in 1983 seven challengers raced for a new silver cup - the Louis Vuitton Cup. Trouble was on the start-line again, but it was an effort he is not proud of. An ageing Baron Bich had bowed out, handing on the French legacy to young movie producer Yves Rousset-Rouard, famous for the soft-porn Emmanuelle movies (he is now the Mayor of Menerbes in southern France, where he has a vineyard and corkscrew museum).
"We had no money, we sailed the old boat from the last campaign, with the same old sails. I spent two months of my life without a cent, taking the crew to McDonald's every day to feed them," Trouble recalls. "But at least we didn't finish last."
His America's Cup sailing days ended there, but he was now entranced by the whole event and, for the first time, it became his full-time job. Trouble started his own public relations company, Jour-J (D-Day), and began working for Louis Vuitton on contract. He set up the first sponsored media centre in Fremantle in 1987.
"We are the only permanent body in the America's Cup for the last 20 years. I am only still here because I am lucky to work for a company like Vuitton. It has nothing to do with my skills," he says.
It's not easy to give Trouble an official title. Says Marcus Hutchinson, who has worked in America's Cup media centres with Trouble since 1992: "You cannot categorise Bruno into a box. He's colourful, opinionated, and has an aura that follows him around. The best way to describe his role is protector of the interests of Louis Vuitton, and, by association, the America's Cup too."
The Challenger of Record (in this America's Cup, Prada) owns the challenger series, and all nine challenger syndicates are equal shareholders in Corm, which manages the series. As title sponsor, Louis Vuitton in effect co-produces the challenger series.
While the syndicates concern themselves with organising the racing, Trouble and his team handle the commercial side of the regatta - the publicity, communication, sponsorship and supplier deals. They ensure there are cars on hand, clothing for the volunteers and photocopiers for the media who swarm in and out of Auckland for six months.
And they organise the most glamorous party in town - the Louis Vuitton Ball. Its venue this time, as always, is a secret until a matter of days beforehand, and it's always worth the wait.
Trouble's office is in a prime position in the media centre, on the end of Hobson Wharf. As he knows, the media have much to do with the success of the event and drawing in the big players. "This is a very special America's Cup, it marks the return of the tycoons. Six out of nine challengers are backed by individuals, men who are spending their own money, not their corporations' money," he says.
"I would like to believe that what we achieved last time in terms of media coverage - 65,000 articles written about the cup, 2000 hours of television shown in almost 100 countries, 300 million pages on the internet - convinced some of them to come. We would like to think maybe Louis Vuitton was in some way responsible for this."
Trouble is sometimes mistaken as a big wheel in the Louis Vuitton fashion business, but you can be sure he does not sell handbags in between America's Cup regattas.
"I am working so much for Louis Vuitton that some people get confused. In San Diego I was at my desk, and the accountant phoned to say, 'I've got a guy who's come to pick up his $250 cheque for repainting the office, and he really wants to talk to you'.
"I said I was busy, but the painter insisted he come in and shake my hand. He walked in, grabbed my hand and said, 'Thank you, Lou-isss'."
There's little time to do much else than the America's Cup, but Trouble is trying to spend more time with his family nowadays. That is why they moved to Auckland 10 months before the regatta began. In the lead-up to the 1999 Louis Vuitton Cup, the family was separated by thousands of kilometres, and Trouble found himself travelling between Auckland and Paris.
"This is why I look so old," he says, running a hand over his slicked-back silver curls. "Last time, I was coming to Auckland one week every month. I was destroyed."
Now the family live in Remuera, in the house belonging to Prada sailor Rod Davis (whose family must live with the Italian team in the Heritage Hotel in the city centre to comply with nationality rules). Sons Augustin, 15, and Paul, 13, are happy going to school at Auckland Grammar, and Melanie is discovering old family ties - her grandmother grew up in New Zealand.
I N A small boatyard on the North Shore, Custom Yachts, the Troubles' boat Wanaka is almost ready to be launched. It is a Next56, worth US$400,000 ($879,100), and bearing the name of the South Island lake where the family spent a memorable holiday.
"This boat is the boat of my life. I'm putting all the money I have saved all my life into this boat. After this America's Cup I will start to have less time at work and more time on the water. We had a sailing sabbatical in 1996, and this time we will take the boat cruising in the Pacific.
"I always say, 'Life is long enough, but not wide enough'. I'm going to try to make it wider."
Trouble's boys enjoy cruising, but they are not interested in yacht racing. He has always made sure that he has not pushed his four children into following in his wake. Yet his daughter is a lawyer and 26-year-old son Romain, from his previous marriage, is a foredeck hand for French challenger Le Defi Areva.
Romain, who is a doctor of biotechnology, did not become interested in sailing until he was 17.
Although he talks to his elder son about the America's Cup, Trouble stresses that he is in no way linked to the French team. It is imperative, he says, that he does not take sides with anyone.
He believes Team New Zealand's hopes of successfully defending the cup for a second time lie with the head of the defenders, Tom Schnackenberg. "He is the guru of the America's Cup today. He is my hero," Trouble says. "I hope the America's Cup stays here one more time, because I love New Zealand. I was so mad about the Rugby World Cup - I was going to write a letter to the rugby union to tell them to sack those guys.
"There's no pollution, you don't have to book a tennis court three weeks in advance. If it [the cup] stays here another time it's fine with me."
And then, as if suddenly remembering his impartiality - and who really pays for the seared tuna - he adds: "But if it goes to Europe it will be great for the future of the event, so that's fine by me too."
* Next week: We profile Team New Zealand's Tom Schnackenberg.
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