After skipper Charlie Ogletree, helmsman Andreas Hagara has now also left the China Team, which is apparently in financial difficulties. The Austrian Tornado sailor, who took over the helmsman's job from Australian Mitch Booth on the Chinese AC45 after the first event of the America's Cup World Series in Cascais, wants to concentrate on the business of his golf course again in future.
A year ago, it was all bliss: press releases heralded the second Chinese Cup challenge. Investor Wang Chao Yong, who provided the basic funding, optimistically trumpeted that his team had been "working for months with the best designers in the world on the hull and wing, in partnership with Chinese universities. Our boat will be built in China and will be ready in February 2012."
In February 2012, however, things look different. All of the sailors have now dropped out and some have joined the Extreme Sailing Series, which competes with the ACWS: American Ogletree has signed on as a trimmer on Oman Air's Xtreme 40, together with Brit Will Howden, who is a tactician there. Australian Graeme Spence joined Roman Hagara's Red Bull Extreme as bowman.
"The entire team left the China Team because we didn't see the point in competing without training against well-financed professional teams that have been training practically all the time since (the ACWS in) San Diego," Andreas Hagara told YACHT. Hagara, like the other sailors, was taking a leap of faith, so to speak, and wanted to wait for the sponsorship negotiations to progress before opting out.
"As you can imagine, the entire management is deep in preparations for the future and is busy fundraising," explained Thierry Barot, the French team boss of the Chinese team. "An official announcement will be made after the meeting (of the AC teams) in San Francisco at the beginning of March."
The closing date for entries for the America's Cup, which will be sailed on the much larger and more expensive AC72 cats in September 2013, is 1 June. So far, there are only three teams that will officially be taking part alongside the defender Oracle Racing: Artemis from Sweden (official challenger), Luna Rossa from Italy and Team New Zealand.
The organisers seem to have come to terms with this miniature field: "We don't need any prophets of doom telling us that four boats are a disaster," America's Cup Event Authority CEO Richard Worth told the "San Francisco Business Times". If there were ten boats, Worth argued, only four or five would still be strong. "And we already have that."
Meanwhile, there is growing criticism of the unrealistic economic forecasts made for San Francisco in the run-up to the Cup. Aaron Peskin, the local Democrat leader, calls the figures ridiculous. "We should be happy if we see 25 per cent of what they've made up," Peskin told the "San Francisco Examiner". "There is no tradition of sailing as a spectator sport for the masses, here in San Francisco or anywhere else in the world."
This article was modified after the original publication with a statement from China Team.
