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2 - 7 September
St Moritz, Switzerland
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| MASTER CRAFTSMAN: Russell Coutts |
Toscana Elba Cup champion Russell Coutts, Alinghi Team. (Simon Palfrader/SEA&SEE)
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Russell Coutts on center stage with the Alinghi Team. (Andrea Campagnolo/SEA&SEE)
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Alinghi Team and Oracle BMW Racing get in some close-quarter maneuvers as Oracle tries to unload a penalty on the run to the finish of their semifinal Match 4. (Simon Palfrader/SEA&SEE)
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Alinghi Team crew Lorenzo Mazza cracks a bottle of champagne for skipper Russell Coutts after winning the Toscana Elba Cup – Trofeo Locman. (Simon Palfrader/SEA&SEE)
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The following story is republished from the current issue of the Swedish Match Tour Newsletter (published May 21, 2004).
By Bob Fisher in Porto Azzurro, Italy
Fourteen months and one week had passed since Russell Coutts skippered Switzerland’s Alinghi Team to a one-sided victory over Team New Zealand in the 31st America’s Cup.
Here he stood on May 9, 2004, atop a podium in the town center of Porto Azzurro, on Italy’s Elba Island, holding up the Trofeo Locman and an over-sized check for Euro 35,000 (approximately $41,600).
An hour earlier, Coutts had completed a masterful comeback from the bottom of the standings to win the third annual Toscana Elba Cup – Trofeo Locman. At the end of racing on Day 3, he was last in the field of 12 skippers with a 1-5 record. Less than 72 hours later, he was crowned the event’s champion.
“I felt a little uncomfortable for a while there,” Coutts said dockside amid a throng of fans and media. “We didn’t do any practice for this event and we almost paid for it.”
Coutts has had little time for match-racing in the months since March 2, 2003, when Alinghi completed a 5-0 rout of Team New Zealand. He has been helping with the planning of the first defense of the most prestigious trophy of match-race sailing in Europe.
What was he doing back on a circuit that he had once totally dominated? “I came for fun,” he said. “That’s the only reason I do it. I come to get together with my guys, which hasn’t happened much since the Cup. It’s an opportunity to be with them and do some racing.”
Coutts’s crew consisted of Rodney Arden, Josh Belsky, Warwick Fleury, Lorenzo Mazza, Dean Phipps and Peter Van Nieuwenhuyzen.
“I really enjoyed the racing,” Coutts said. “The conditions were difficult and tricky.”
Long ago he acknowledged the value of the Swedish Match Tour as a training ground, pointing out that there was nowhere else where the standards are as high and where the perpetual challenge develops new techniques and strategies. But with so much to do in the coming months with the Alinghi defense in Valencia, he has reservations about his full-time involvement.
“I can’t see myself doing the Tour regularly,” Coutts admitted, citing time constraints. “But if they let me come to a few events a year, that’s what I will do.”
His competitive fire is stimulated by some of the other events in this year’s tour.
“The Portugal Match Cup looks to be a good event. I sailed a regatta there earlier this year in Dragons and I loved the conditions. The water conditions are great there, so I am sure that will be a wonderful event. The Swedish Match Cup is always a great event, so I will probably do that because I enjoy that one.”
He agreed that everyone enjoys the event at Marstrand because of its unique status and the huge crowd that it draws.
“I haven’t exactly done that well in it,” he said ruefully. “I think I’ve won it once, but I enjoy it. That’s a big part of it for me these days; if I’m not having fun, then the way I look at it is there is something radically wrong at this point in my sailing career. I’m trying to do events I like to do and that I enjoy.”
With a record 14 successive America’s Cup Match victories as a skipper to his credit, Coutts is looking elsewhere for stimulation. His fondness for the golf course is well known, but he needs mental exercise as well.
“I‘ve got to look for new ways to motivate myself these days,” he says. “I’m looking at some new concepts, some new ideas; something might come out of one of those ideas.”
They are diverse, but include yacht design, a subject on which he holds strong views. “There are so many interesting concepts in yacht design these days,” he suggests. “It has changed a lot over the last three or four years more so than in the previous fifty. Not in terms of sail and rig technology, but some of the changes we are seeing in hulls are great.
“I always think that your best ideas come when you are having fun. I don’t think that the best ideas come when you are blocked into a routine; then you are simply going through the motions. It all becomes a bit mundane. It’s hard then to imagine becoming creative at all. The best ideas come when you have some space.”
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