Race officers Harold Bennett and Peter Reggio were forced to call off racing yet again yesterday.
In the last eight days, only two days have permitted racing: Friday, when two series of matches were run, and on Sunday when only one was possible.
Instead of Round One being concluded it has scarcely started. Instead of last night and today being the day when the 11 teams would have re-moded their boats, making subtle changes to the wings on their bulb keels, rudder sizes, using new sails and so forth, having built a better picture of where their own boat's performance sat relative to their rivals, there will be a mad scramble to do this in just hours when this round is concluded.
Tension between the challenger camp and defender is nothing new in the America's Cup. It is a winner-takes-all, adversarial competition. But there has long been a feeling that the Swiss defenders, Alinghi, set the timetable for the trials in a way that was going hinder the development of a strong team emerging victorious from the selection process.
"If you use the conspiracy theory, you believe that Alinghi are trying to cook half the teams and the semi-finalists in the first two rounds," said Emirates Team New Zealand's boss Grant Dalton. "You're not given much time in the semis and the finals then you race the defender. So that could mean you're fried by the time you race Alinghi."
