So…
Why don’t they just cut to the chase, and call it the
Emirates Cup? As this column predicted several months ago,
the next America’s Cup challenge is headed overseas.
Here’s what Werewolf said back
in March:
Emirates has made a major commitment
to Portsmouth/Isle of Wight as a sailing centre of
excellence – and voila, that’s where the next challenger
of record is coming from, and where the next Cup contest
could well be sailed. Such incredible luck for Emirates,
right? Over on the other side of the table, Emirates also
retains naming rights for the New Zealand team. Can anyone
doubt that the crucial inputs as to the when and where of
the next America’s Cup challenge are likely to be made by
Emirates, and not by anyone in New Zealand?
On the
bright side… The collapse of the Kiwi bid means that the
weird joint venture between the New Zealand government and
the sheikdom of Dubai – whose Dubai Investment Corporation
owns the Emirates Group that owns the airline – has now
come to an end. Thankfully, this will save New Zealand some
of the reputational risk of being joined at the hip to the
unsavoury ruler of Dubai. As I said in March:
No
doubt, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum is a remarkable
person. Of late though, he
has been notoriously associated with the
kidnapping, drugging, imprisonment and torture of two of his
daughters.
This week, Auckland mayor Phil Goff has
been whining about the hundreds of millions of
taxpayer/ratepayer money spent on the Cup bid and on
Auckland’s yachting facilities. Good grief. The people who
own and race yachts are super rich. Many of them became
super rich by knowing how to take suckers to the cleaners.
That is how they roll. (That’s also how rorts like public
private partnerships (PPPs) get off the ground.) More than
anything, the America’s Cup is a machine whereby wealthy
people with…