It sounds like a joke, but according to the two creators it is meant seriously: The Eckernförde-based company The Friendship Racing Division run by sailor Alexander Bruhn and two-time world champion in the Tornado, Roland Gäbler, want to launch an all-German campaign.
Many have failed, but none have succeeded - yet. This is why doubts are justified about the latest plans for a German challenge. Serious doubts.
After the failure of Daimler-Benz with the AeroSail campaign, the unsuccessful endeavours of Mike Illbruck and the floundering of the not-so-fresh attempts of the current German syndicate Fresh Seventeen, an Eckernförde service company now wants to go it alone when it comes to sailing.
It has attracted attention with big announcements before. A year ago, "The Friendship", which is nothing more than a small service provider, wanted to organise a Grade 1 match race as part of the Swedish Match Tour on the Baltic Sea. Nothing came of it. The project collapsed silently after just a few weeks.
Talking about the even more ambitious plans for an AC campaign, initiator Alexander Bruhn confidently told YACHT: "We're not saying how much money we need, but everyone knows that it's between 25 and 100 million euros."
Allegedly, the financing is already largely in place. "We want to position ourselves at the lower end, and it is true that we are only missing a single-digit million amount." Says Bruhn. Who the financiers are supposed to be, why 20 million have allegedly already been secured, while Fresh Seventeen has not made any significant progress for months, all this remains open and unanswered.
And where statements are made, only new questions arise.
According to Bruhn, the skipper should be "the best German". As a club, the biggest sponsor gets to choose one. It's a bit like "make a wish".
Two older America's Cup boats are to be purchased, which will initially be available for training in Kiel. Bruhn: "But we won't say which ones so that we don't drive up the price. Presumably these are ships from the English Sunsail Group, which originate from a French campaign in the mid-90s and were used for corporate events in England. Chances off Valencia: zero. The Cuppers would not even be usable because they are not built in accordance with the rules.
The sporting director of the project is to be Roland Gäbler, who admittedly has not yet proven himself to be a match-racing talent and has never had close contact with the America's Cup scene.
But the most astonishing thing is that Gäbler is being sponsored for an Olympic campaign by T-systems, who in turn are involved in the Cup with the South African team Shosholoza. Tornado talent Gäbler is thus organising a new competitor for his most important sponsor - if anything should come of it.
You can't just have concerns about this development, you have to.
Gold sailor and America's Cup winner Jochen Schümann ("Alinghi") and other well-known sailors see this as a fragmentation of forces that can only harm Germany as a participant in the America's Cup. Roland Gäbler's club, the renowned Norddeutscher Regatta Verein, which has always been at the forefront of similar projects, is also distancing itself from GermanyOne.
The facts at a glance:
There is a blue-eyed doer, an enthusiastic former world champion, but no ship, no sailors and no infrastructure. There are many question marks and no certainties. There are well-intentioned ideas, idealistic visions, but far and wide no-one who has even begun to prove that they can form a great whole from them. Unfortunately, that's not how the America's Cup works.
Mast and sheet break, GermanyOne!
