Barker in link to New York Cup bid
Kiwi Dean Barker has been linked to the New York Yacht Club’s America’s Cup team.
Sailing legend Tom Ehman, writing on his website sailingillustrated. com, says multiple sources have indicated that NYYC chief executive and skipper Terry Hutchinson has hired Barker to helm Quantum Racing’s TP52 next summer in the Mediterranean.
The monohull Super Series is seen as the main training ground for 2021 Cup teams, at least until they can start sailing their first new AC75 in 2019.
The NYCC already has indicated they will enter the 2021 America’s Cup in Auckland.
Hutchinson has a relationship with Barker as tactician on Emirates Team New Zealand at the 2007 Cup in Valencia where they won the Louis Vuitton Cup challenger series over Prada before losing to defender Team Alinghi.
Barker was then involved in an acrimonious split with Team New Zealand after they lost the 2013 America’s Cup to Oracle 9- 8 after leading 8- 1.
This year he was back in the Cup as chief executive and skipper of SoftBank Team Japan in Bermuda where they lost in the challenger semifinals to Sweden’s Artemis Racing 4- 3.
Barker has been non- committal about his sailing future after Bermuda.
He admitted he had mixed emotions watching Team New Zea- land regain the Cup. “Reflecting back on the racing, particularly the racing between Emirates Team New Zealand and Oracle Team USA, I cannot help but be impressed with the domination that TNZ showed.
“They were truly a class above the rest, and the radically different design and innovation that the team had taken ended up far superior to the solutions the other teams had found,” Barker said.
“Having been a part of Team New Zealand for a large part of my career, it is with mixed emotions that I watch the team take the America’s Cup back to New Zealand.”
Barker said having the America’s Cup back in Auckland would be mass- ive for sailing and the economy. “It will be amazing to have the America’s Cup back on New Zealand waters and it will be a great boost to the New Zealand marine industry as a whole.”
Meanwhile, Ben Ainslie is so keen to win back the America’s Cup for Britain that he’ll spend the weekend sailing with and mentoring a crew of young countrymen who one day could be competing for the oldest trophy in international sport.
Ainslie, one of the world’s most accomplished sailors, will serve as helmsman of Land Rover BAR Academy in the seventh stop of the Extreme Sailing Series, which will be contested in foiling 32- foot catamarans on San Diego Bay from today through to Monday. The academy is an offshoot of Land Rover BAR, the team Ainslie led in the 35th America’s Cup earlier this year in Bermuda.
Land Rover BAR had a rough go in the challenger trials, losing in the semifinals to Team New Zealand.
“It was kind of a bit of a whirlwind campaign, you know, four years went in an instant, really,” Ainslie said. “Certainly looking back, clearly even though we were a new team we set out to try to win. We didn’t do that and in some ways it was quite painful, but there were a lot of learnings from that campaign and we know we will be stronger next time around. I guess that frustration is what motivates us to come back stronger next time. That’s really the driving force for us now.”
Part of that process is to prepare the next generation of sailors for the sport’s marquee regatta. The academy sailors are 23 and younger.
“We’d like to hope that some of them would make it through to the senior team this next Cup,” Ainslie said.
Ainslie said he was okay with the shift from 50- foot foiling catamarans back to monohulls.
“From what I can understand, I think this will be in a monohull something like we’ve never seen before. Therefore it still will hopefully fulfil the requirements for being fast and exciting, especially for young people coming through. I’m positive about it.”