1997. Unknown Bertelli says he will win America’s Cup

Welcome to the special section “GdV 5th Years.” We are introducing you, day by day, An article from the archives of the Journal of Sailing, starting in 1975. A word of advice, get in the habit of starting your day with the most exciting sailing stories-it will be like being on a boat even if you are ashore.

Unknown Bertelli says he will win America’s Cup

Taken from the 1997 Journal of Sailing, Year 23, no. 3, April pp, 40-44.

A 50-year-old man from Tuscany says he wants to win the America’s Cup. His name is Patrizio Bertelli, he is unknown to the sailing world but he has a famous wife with whom he runs a famous company: Prada. The Luna Rossa myth is born, but Bertelli does not yet know it will be called that.

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Her husband wants to demonstrate how to win the America’s Cup. Thus was born the exciting challenge of Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli to the XXX America’s Cup.

After Azure 1983, Azure e Italy in 1987, and The Moor of Venice in 1992, Italy is back in the America’s Cup. Although no public statement will be made until next May 14 (the deadline beyond which the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, the cup-holding club that will compete in Auckland, New Zealand, at the turn of 1999-2000, will no longer accept entries for further challenges), it is already known who the men of the Italian campaign are and what their plans are.

Heading the operation is Patrizio Bertelli, 50, of Arezzo, Miuccia Prada ‘s husband and CEO of the Pellettieri d’Italia group to which the Prada, Miu Miu and Granello fashion houses belong. The first comforting fact is that the Italian consortium will be the one with the highest budget among all the challengers. There is even talk of a starting base of 70 billion against the 40 yet to be reached of the syndicates until now considered the richest. Just think that Raul Gardini in 1992 spent more than 100 for a campaign with five boats, while now the new America’s Cup regulations limit the number of new hulls that can be built to a maximum of two.

Bertelli has appointed Frenchman Laurent Esquier, who previously held the same position with Il Moro di Venezia of Raul Gardini in 1992. Unfortunately, statistics are not on his side: Esquier has in fact taken part in nine editions of the America’s Cup without ever winning one. Californian magician Doug Peterson, winner with America’s e Team New Zealand of the last two editions of theAmerica’s Cup. Despite his credentials, demanding a salary of two million dollars Peterson had so far found no consortium willing to meet his financial demands and had been dumped even by the New Zealanders, who thanks to his brilliance had managed to snatch the cup from the Americans two years ago in San Diego, achieving a historic success for their country.

Doug Peterson will work alongside German Frers, designer of the Moro di Venezia boats in 1992. In addition to Peterson, Patrizio Bertelli has provided for the nationalization of Brazilian champion Torben Grael ( America’s Cup rules require that anyone on the team must have the same nationality as the consortium), who will fill the role of tactician. Grael is a well-known sailor in Italy, especially for his long militancy in the crew of Brava of Pasquale Landolfi and for his collaboration with the Lillia shipyard in Musso, on Lake Como. It was with a Star built by Lillia that he won the gold medal at the last Olympics in Atlanta. Helmsman of the boat will be Francesco De Angelis, although he will be busy with Team EF ‘s European syndicate for the Whitbread, the round-the-world race that will start from Southampton next September and also end in England in May 1998.

De Angelis and Bertelli will have to find a way to coincide with each other’s schedules, but there should be no problem since Paul Cayard, who also headed a 2000 America’s Cup challenge with the consortium America One of the San Francis Yacht Club. The club that will represent the Italian challenge to the XXX America’s Cup remains to be defined. The America’s Cup in fact began as a challenge between yacht clubs and not between nations.

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Patrizio Bertelli would like to stay in Tuscany, and his first choice fell on the Punta Ala Yacht Club of which he is a member (among other things, he turned down a proposal from the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda of Porto Cervo, which had immediately come forward hoping to revive his image, now rusty after the fabulous years in which he was a protagonist with Azzurra in the 1983 and 1987 America’s Cup ). Doug Peterson was extremely favorable about the Punta Ala marina where there is already a shipyard, albeit too small.

Indeed, it must also be decided where the new boat will be built. Most likely Bertelli will discard the Tencara hypothesis (the shipyard set up by Raoul Gardini to build the entire five-boat series of the Moro di Venezia) for the same reason he declined to be represented by the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda: to avoid having his challenge compared with any of the previous ones. Patrizio Bertelli also wants to be remembered as “the first.”

Here then, the base of the Italian challenge could be moved further south, perhaps to the Argentario where the Cantiere Navale dell’Argentario owned by Federico Nardi, the person who until now has been in charge of all the boats owned by Bertelli, is located. Nardi himself has been tasked with looking for a place to have a new custom boatyard built for the America’s Cup and is inspecting all possible areas from Punta Ala and Follonica to Gaeta and Naples. For the time being, Patrizio Bertelli has purchased two used boats from the consortium of America’ of Bill Koch in the 1992 and 1995 America’s Cup editions, which will arrive in Livorno at the end of April. The ’92 one is the same one that defeated the very Moor of Venice by Raul Gardini and on whose design Doug Peterson himself worked.

How the Italian challenge was born

However it turns out, whether triumph or defeat, when the history of the Italian consortium that participated in the XXX edition of the America’s Cup is reconstructed in 2000, it will start from “that famous” February 1997. There are two most important dates to remember: February 26 and March 18. On February 26, Torben Grael and Doug Peterson apply for residency at the City of Milan. This is the fact that causes the first leak of probable involvement of an Italian syndicate in theAmerica’s Cup. Until then, the operation had remained totally secret. Torben Grael, during those days, is in Miami at the SORC regattas, where he is to helm the Brazilian Mumm 36 Bravo. Participating in the same event is the Italian Mumm 36 Breeze by Paolo Gaia, whose crew is largely made up of guys who were part of the Moro di Venezia and who have not given up hope of returning to America’s Cup racing.

On the very day of the first round of the SORC, however, Torben Grael disappears from sight. “He had to leave in a hurry for Italy to apply for residency,” is the rumor that quickly spreads around the dock. Strange that after so many years of militancy in the crew of Brava of Neapolitan shipowner Pasquale Landolfi and working with the Lillia shipyard on Lake Como, suddenly Torben Grael is applying for residency in Italy. At this point it is easy to put two and two together: in fact, there are only a few days left until February 26, the date on which the first America’s Cup regatta will be held in 2000 between the New Zealand defender and the challenger selected at the end of the elimination rounds that began in November 1999.

The regulations, which require that anyone on the team must have the same nationality as the consortium, force foreigners to apply for nationality in the specific country at least three years in advance. In this case, by February 26, 1997 precisely. March 18, on the other hand, is the day when the top executives of the Italian consortium(Bertelli, Esquier, Peterson, Frers, Grael and De Angelis) meet for the first time all together at the Prada offices in Milan to establish the strategies and plans for the challenge to the XXX America’s Cup.

Andrea Falcon

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