The recent seemingly catastrophic breakdown in relations between Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Sir Ben Ainslie has left British sailing fans dumbfounded. There has been no concrete new information since a shock press release from Ratcliffe – the sole funder of the British campaigns for the 36th and 37th America’s Cup under the banner INEOS Britannia – that the company would be challenging for AC38 without Ainslie.
If the news itself came as a massive surprise, what was even more surprising was the complete absence of any acknowledgement of Ainslie’s massive contribution to the syndicate over the past two America’s Cup cycles. Disputes and fallouts are not uncommon in professional sport but in the vast majority of cases an etiquette is observed that requires the outgoing party to be politely thanked for their efforts and wished the best for their future endeavours.
Not so in this case, though, as Ratcliffe made no mention of the five-time Olympic medallist and the most successful sailor of all time, choosing instead to express his pride for the team’s development of ‘a British boat that was truly competitive for the first time in decades’, before moving quickly on to claim that he had ‘100 scientists and engineers working on the design of our AC38 yacht’.
Whatever it was that Ainslie did to irk the billionaire petrochemicals tycoon so badly that he wanted no more to do with him remains a private matter. But the tone of Ratcliffe’s statement is plain and simple bad form – and it reflects badly on him personally, his company, and his AC38 campaign.
For his part Ainslie claimed to be ‘astounded’ by the news of an ‘INEOS and Mercedes F1’ challenge for the 38th America’s Cup, before going on to issue a not too veiled threat of legal action, saying: ‘This plan raises significant legal and practical obstacles for them that will play out in the coming days and weeks’.
There has been no further comment from either side since then and it is probably fair to assume that any hope of a reconciliation between the two esteemed knights of the realm has now vanished.
So in what state does the Ratcliffe / Ainslie breakup leave the British America’s Cup landscape? Well, not stronger – that is for sure. Two warring British challengers for AC38 may seem like a juicy prospect for non-partisan America’s Cup fans, but two such competing teams will inevitably end up being weaker than fielding one fully-funded, fully-resourced, fully-staffed syndicate that can call on the accumulated knowledge, expertise, intellectual property, and campaign continuity that Ainslie – latterly with the help of Ratcliffe – has assembled over the last three British campaigns.
What we will be left with is two compromised challenges. On the one side there will be the INEOS campaign with more or less unlimited funds and the technical firepower of Mercedes F1 (of which Sir Jim owns one third). On the other side we will have Sir Ben’s Athena Racing programme that will likely retain the bulk of the sailing talent pool and holds the trump card of being the presumptive partner of the AC38 Challenger Of Record yacht club, the Royal Yacht Squadron.
At this stage neither have the potential to mount a credible challenge for the 38th edition of yachting’s oldest and most prestigious competition. Both are severely lacking in key areas: INEOS needs sailing and operational talent and experience, while Athena needs to raise the around £200 million budget believed to be required to challenge for the America’s Cup.
It is not beyond the bounds of imagination to conjure up a scenario where both sides make up their respective shortfalls. Then, though, we have the tricky question of who gets their hands on the intellectual property that has been accumulated over the last two (in fact three) British America’s Cup campaigns. Simple logic says that the IP should lie with Ainslie’s Athena Racing as the actual America’s Cup racing team (although Athena’s sole funder, INEOS was never any more than a naming sponsor).
If, as seems likely, this whole matter turns into a legal fight then the picture becomes much less clear. Precisely where that IP data actually sits and who has access to it is impossible to say from the outside. However, the computing power for INEOS Britannia’s design team came from the Mercedes Applied Sciences division in Brackley, England. In Athena Racing’s best scenario a lawsuit could force INEOS to hand the IP over to them, but who is to say there are not copies already made?
What happens next is anyone’s guess. As a British America’s Cup fan I am hoping that given a little time to reflect Sir Jim comes to realise that in addition to his struggles at Manchester United, he doesn’t really want the hassle and expense of mounting an America’s Cup campaign.
Worthy of note here is that nowhere in the INEOS statement does it claim to be the COR. Also notable is that there is no mention of which yacht club it is planning to associate with and whether an official challenge has been submitted to the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron.
So, at this stage, cool heads could still prevail. A dignified withdrawal by INEOS – perhaps as part of the strategic review of its sports franchises that is reportedly currently underway – is still feasible. That, along with a patriotic handshake and a gracious handover to Ainslie of any outstanding IP, would leave the way clear for the Challenger of Record Athena Racing to mount a major fundraising campaign for Britain’s third consecutive America’s Cup campaign.
A pipedream perhaps, but a path much preferable than the prospect of a prolonged legal battle that would only serve to diminish the potency of both British challengers and have the inevitable knock on effect of delaying Emirates Team New Zealand’s plans for staging the 38th America’s Cup.
