A quiet day in Valencia

I know that I am one of a number of sailing writers who have given the latest America's Cup a wide birth. If two competing squillionnaires and their giant state-of-the-art catamarans want to contest ownership of the oldest trophy in international sport in relative privacy off the coast of Valencia, that's fine. But they should not assume much interest from the rest of the world.

The lack of event-sponsor interest from business might suggest that the contestants are reviving the Corinthian spirit. Far from it. Corinthianism is founded on sportsmanship and there is nothing sporting in this latest cup challenge. As far as I can gauge from all the court hearings preceding the contest, the event has become a money-no-object willy-waving exercise between a couple of over-inflated egos that have become detached from the inclusiveness that characterises most great sporting events.

The professional teams who are sailing these yachts don't care about the personal vendettas much. They're happy to be paid to go head-to-head in a best of three encounter that, if nothing else, really does involve a battle of cutting-edge sailing technologies. In that respect it would not at all surprise me to see a bit of carnage out there. Some extreme forces are involved and it wouldn't take much to tip one of these machines at full throttle.

So it was with a sense of reluctant curiosity that I took a peak at what was happening in the first race. After all it has taken millions of dollars, umpteen court appearances and whole series of "on,off" announcements to arrive at this day. And what an anticlimax it proved to be as the first day of racing was postponed due to a lack of wind. I suppose we should have seen that coming.

iShares Cup, Amsterdam

All that wind in the past few weeks and when you need a good breeze it disappears. It's like mid-summer today in the Amsterdam canal basin where 10 Extreme-40 catamarans are competing in the final round of the iShares Cup.

The only teams with a chance of winning the series are Alinghi and Team Origin and up to half way through the programme, Alinghi look to be breezing it, which, given the light airs, is hardly the right choice of adjective.

I spent some time this morning floating around on Team Origin with a star-studded cast of sailors including three Olympic Gold medalists, Ben Ainslie, Iain Percy and Andrew "Bart" Simpson, joined on the boat by Sir Keith Mills, the team principal.

Mills has been working behind the scenes helping to broker a deal on the America's Cup between Ernesto Bertorelli and Larry Ellison.

He seems optimistic that the two businessmen who have been at the centre of protracted legal action over the future of the race, will come to an accommodation before the next court hearing in the New Year.

So will the next event be multi-hulled or single-hulled? It's too early to say but most people I have spoken with think it's inconceivable that the future of the event will not consist of a single-hulled challenge competition preceding a two-boat sail off for the cup itself. Mills still believes the challengers will be racing against each other next year, culminating in a cup race in 2011.

And what of the two big multi-hulls that have been built for BMW Oracle and Alinghi? Mills thinks they will make fine museum pieces. What a ridiculous waste of time and money.