Coutts & Cayard pull the crowds
Russell Coutts and Paul Cayard of Olympic, Americas Cup and
Whitbread fame did a good job pulling in the crowds at Woollahra to
raise money for the Australian 29ers going to San Francisco.
It was a bit of a suprise to see who turned up for the event. 90%
adults > 25. Both Coutts & Cayard were expecting to have a
much younger audience - but then I guess the kids these days just
don’t care.
Coutts talked here and there about his love of Sydney (whatever),
and how he started out in sailing. He poked lots of holes in the
audience’s knowledge of the rules, and dodged most of the tough
questions on the AC/controversy. There weren’t many tough questions
mind you.
Cayard also talked about how he started, how much it cost to sail
in the Olympics (both this time and back in the day), he talked
about Phillipe and the good things he’s doing for sailing. He did
make some vague references to his plans with Russell for a “new”
event in sailing around an NFL model. More entertainment for the
dollars than Americas Cup, while not necessarily taking away from
it.
Cayard did make some jabs at Ellison & Bertarelli for blowing
so much money (probably closing in on $500M by 2007) on their in
some ways frivolous campaigns. He contrasted that to Kahn, who is
supporting lots of Olympic and dinghy sailors in the US and through
Pegasus Racing. I guess the B’s are just allowing their respective
Olympians to blow money on the Olympics by paying them so much - in
the end the same result but with an AC campaign too.
Cayard seemed more open and honest about his failures and his
limited opportunities for Olympic success. He did share an insight
into his passion for sailing and racing, whereas Coutts is a little
more Schumacher-esque - clinical & professional. I guess he has
a few less failures to stew about having been an Olympic gold
medallist and the most successful AC skipper in history.
These guys are both obviously very talented, very professional and
very smart people. Interesting they didn’t hang around to chat for
long after they’d finished - Russell left immediately - probably to
avoid the journalist vultures who were waiting to corner him.
Anyway… now to get plans together for San Fran I guess… along
with everything else that is happening.
Update #1: A very convoluted
summary is available on sail-world. Maybe it’s Friday
afternoon, but can anyone understand that? And
which Olympics was Cayard a gold medallist in?
