The Bosun
Sir Russell Coutts, he of the SailGP circus, has just earned the inaugural R69 “Wounded Willy of the Year” award for his pained whinge on Facebook. The same man whose PR machine churns out endless gushing media releases now complains about “online chatter” and that “a couple of so-called journalists” have had the temerity to question the SailGP racing format.
How dare they! Just because there’ve been some horrendous collisions, injuries and wrecked boats? What ungrateful, “uninformed” wretches they must be! (He cites no names, of course.)
Coutts dismisses the suggestion that SailGP might adopt conventional upwind starts, saying they would produce chaos. He might even be right, but that is surely a reflection on the compressed – and potentially unsafe – courses and the way in which the 50-foot wingsail cats have distorted the fundamentals of competitive sailing.
Stripped bare, his position is this: the boats and race formats make the conventional rules unworkable, so we changed the rules. That’s inverted logic, but when there are multi-millions of dollars invested in this circuit, then anything that might make the action “more understandable” (his words) is fine.
But the most revealing aspect of the Coutts monologue is his allegation of a conspiracy.
He alleges that the criticisms are motivated by people “trying to bring down SailGP”. Why? So as to “enhance the America’s Cup”. Duh? Unless he has evidence that Grant Dalton is paying journalists to undermine the Coutts/Ellison circus and promote the AC, then his allegation is ludicrous (and awfully like a persecution complex).
In truth, a significant proportion of the sailing community probably wish “a plague on both their houses” – SailGP and the AC. So, Sir Russell, if we may borrow another great line from Shakespeare, “The lady doth protest too much.” Responding in such a wounded way to a few suggestions just shows how touchy you’ve become to criticism.
And while we’re at it, Rusty old boy, never trust AI software to do the voice-recognition subtitles for your Facebook rants. We particularly enjoyed those boats on “Starbucks tack”.
The Bosun
