KEY POINTS:
Bruno Trouble, the consistent face of the America's Cup over 25 years, has no problem saying it: he wants Team New Zealand to win.
Because if they don't, this will likely be the last America's Cup for Louis Vuitton.
It seems unthinkable. Trouble is one of the men who personifies the modern America's Cup. An Olympian, an America's Cup sailor, the man who conceived and then ran the Louis Vuitton Cup, a sponsor.
Louis Vuitton is the sponsor who became an integral part of the event. They have the longest standing title sponsorship in sport - 25 years.
But this is all under threat if Alinghi win the 32nd America's Cup. If the Swiss win, the strong expectation is that the sponsorship will be thrown open to the highest bidder. Louis Vuitton? Pay more or no more.
Louis Vuitton have already lost the right to communicate the America's Cup to the world - a function now undertaken by America's Cup Management, the company 100 per cent owned by Alinghi boss Ernesto Bertarelli and set up to run the Cup.
"Of course I want Team New Zealand to win," he says. "This time, things are getting ridiculous. Last time in Auckland, the organisational costs of the America's Cup were ¬25 million ($43.7 million). This time, ¬250 million - 10 times more."
As the Alinghi team search for more revenue, they spread their net wider and the commercial stable becomes increasingly full of what Trouble calls "pet food companies".
"The day we get a pizza company with its brand on the mainsail of a competing yacht, that is the end of the America's Cup as it is now," sniffs Trouble.
The appeal for sponsors like Louis Vuitton, Audemars Piguet, BMW and many others is the exclusivity of the event, he says. It is the perfect match for a company like Vuitton, matching its brand image with a sport cut from the same cloth and populated by people who have the same kind of exclusivity philosophy.
"It's not visibility we seek," says Trouble, wearing his Vuitton hat. "If we just wanted visibility, we would take out a billboard at a soccer match."
You see, that's the problem. They want to turn this into the soccer World Cup. "I think the America's Cup has just got too big now. It should have stayed the same size as it was in Auckland, no bigger than that."
He wishes the Cup was still held in Auckland. "We know that the Kiwis have had 20 years in the America's Cup and that they understand the values, the historical values and the importance of the event. Unlike ACM, they understand the importance of the past. "
Trouble has been a change agent but always kept in mind the core of the Cup, even as it has evolved from an amateur to professional event.
And now an America's Cup without Louis Vuitton? Mais non, surely not.
