Yachting: Forget Coutts and Butterworth, open the books

By CHRIS LAIDLAW

Messrs Coutts and Butterworth are most welcome to move on to the greener pastures of Switzerland.

There should be no recriminations over their right, as professional sportsmen, to sell their services to another country seeking to lift the America's Cup.

They should not be surprised, on the other hand, if many people feel a sense of betrayal. That is a quite natural reaction and it reflects the inherent incompatibility between the old-fashioned glory of sport and the new-fashioned business of sport.

The last contest has been and gone and Peter Blake's team happened to win the cup. It's here in the cabinet. The job has been done and the sailors who did it have been paid off in terms of the financial arrangements for that job.

Who actually defends it next time is a different matter.

There is obviously more than enough talent being fast-tracked to take care of that and it is, in the end, incidental if a couple of the participants from last time decide to move on.

We assume that all the new team members will be New Zealanders, but is that essential? In the end, it is the Team New Zealand brand that counts, rather than the individuals who work for it. We shall see on that one.

Loyalty is a curious force. These days sport, like business, doesn't acknowledge national boundaries any more.

A global marketplace for talent means that New Zealand sailors, just like New Zealand rugby players, will be sought by other countries, and whatever the market is prepared to pay becomes the market price.

In the case of Coutts and Butterworth, the market price has escalated exponentially as businessmen with more money than sense, and egos that need more fulfilment than money alone can provide, line up to buy the best in the hope that they can personally drink from the Auld Mug and make the cover of Time magazine.

It was interesting to hear Michael Fay declare with his usual vehemence, that he, personally, would not lift a finger to help any other country to lift the America's Cup. He means every word of it.

But he can afford to. He has made a fortune by being very un-nationalistic in his business affairs and there is a certain irony in his demanding moral standards of sportsmen who are doing, in their particular field, exactly as he has done.

None of us has any right of access to the details of Coutts' or Butterworth's salary package. It is none of our business.

The issue of the financial transparency of the America's Cup defence budget is a very different matter. There, we have a very definite right to the full facts, for the simple reason that a great many of our dollars have been invested in it.

Both the Government and all the rest of us who contributed are entitled to a good deal more information than has been served up thus far.

The Team New Zealand syndicate preparing for the next defence will be making a dangerous mistake if it assumes it can conduct its affairs in the same half-light as its predecessor.

It would be a tragedy if the instinctive, wholesome public support for the defence were to be compromised, and the cup lost, just because those responsible refused to fully open the books.