AMERICA'S CUP: The clock is ticking for the challengers

With the protocol for the 35th America's Cup, the defender Oracle Team USA has caused some confusion. The registration deadline for all potential challengers was set at midnight San Francisco time on 8 August. Without, however, specifying what should be entered. Of course, the America's Cup, and okay, sailing will again be on flying catamarans, called AC 62. But the most important questions, about when and above all where, remained unanswered.

This is particularly important for teams that are financed by sponsorship and not by a single super-rich sponsor, such as Torbjörn Törnqvist at Team Artemis or Prada man Patrizio Bertelli as patron of Luna Rossa. If you need sponsors, you have to be able to say which markets you can reach. However, this information will not be available until October this year at the earliest, or by the end of the year at the latest. The favoured San Francisco has already been sorted out, leaving San Diego and Bermuda.

Many teams obviously found it difficult to plan a campaign. This is because only five teams have gone public so far. According to the protocol, at least three entries are required. Whether these will come together harbours some suspense.

Because there have already been victims. For example, the Australian challenger Team Australia withdrew its entry, apparently because the whole thing was too expensive for them. This was all the more precarious as it was the so-called Challenger of Record, the first and therefore most important challenger. The terms of the protocol were negotiated with this challenger, making it virtually null and void if it is not recognised by the subsequent challenger.

But this new Challenger of Record has not yet been named. Which either means that nobody wanted to take on this role yet or that there is simply no other announcement yet. Because normally the next team to be announced moves up.

In this respect, it will be interesting to see who signs by Saturday morning German time. Especially as it's not just a signature. With the last stroke of the pen, a registration fee of 1.025 million dollars is due, and a second instalment of two million dollars must be paid by the end of the year. So a total of around 2.3 million euros just to be there.

Under such circumstances, the number of potential challengers is limited. The Swedish Team Artemis, the Italian Luna Rossa and the British BAR Racing of Olympic medallist Ben Ainslie are among the certain candidates. In secret negotiations between these syndicates and Oracle Team USA, representatives of the French Team France were also recently involved, although they have not yet announced any sponsors. Team New Zealand, which was so dramatically defeated by Oracle Team USA at the last Cup, has remained in the background. At the end of June, they said that they were ready for a challenge and that they thought the conditions, to summarise, were just fine. Surprising, given that team boss Grant Dalton had been making quite different noises shortly beforehand, complaining about the "impossible protocol".

But even if all the teams that have more or less already been in the pot enter, we cannot speak of any major progress for the Cup, which should be so broadly and favourably positioned. After all, it would be almost the same protagonists as in the last edition - almost, because maybe the French will pull it off.