I've had no approach and spoken to no one about it. In Auckland, Team New Zealand syndicate head Tom Schnackenberg said he had not talked to Dalton. It's something we would have to think about. Ebert said if Dalton headed the 2003 defence it would free Schnackenberg and skipper Dean Barker to do what they knew best - designing and sailing the defence yachts. Never has that been clearer than in the past week as top sailors from imminently successful Team New Zealand were lured from their homeland, shipmates and the hallmarks of their fame by a rich Swiss guy willing to spend, spend, spend.
Profligate wealth is back in the Cup where it belongs.
You've been missed. In the last decade, under the guidance of Dennis Conner, the Cup has turned in large part into a tawdry device to sell everything from computers to health plans to lottery tickets. Graceful boats that once plied the waves with nothing but pretty sheer lines and tall, glinting sails to commend them have turned into floating billboards slathered with so many corporate logos, they look like stock cars. It's a far cry from the glory days of Harold Vanderbilt, Sir Thomas Lipton, Baron Marcel Bich, Ted Turner and the like, who used the America's Cup to blow off steam, not generate it. Conner's all-American idea after winning the prize in Australia in 1987 was to use the boats to move goods.