AMERICA’S CUP Q & A : Raul Gardini’s Campaign Sails Across Cultural Lines

cosmopolitan One who is at home in any country, without local prejudices. Not provincial. A citizen of the world. --Webster’s

When Raul Gardini sails on Il Moro di Venezia as the silent 17th crewman in this America’s Cup, he is not difficult to spot. He’s the one with the wavy gray hair, the St. Tropez tan and the tie.

The tie isn’t because of any patrician dress code linked to Roman aristrocracy, or because Gardini thinks the mythical Moor of Venice--a character from Othello--would be demeaned by his modern-day admirer appearing overly casual to the pedestrian observer.

No, Gardini wears a tie because he can’t stand turtlenecks and a tie keeps his neck warm. Gardini is a practical man.

Born in Ravenna on the Adriatic Sea, south of Venice, Gardini, 58, is as Italian as mostaccioli. But he has lived in France since his brother-in-law Arturo squeezed him out of the Ferruzi family business empire last June.

No matter. He seems prosperous and comfortable running his new company, Societe Centrale d’Investissements, which holds equity interests throughout French industry. Borders and nationalities mean little to the businessman Gardini.

In Italy, according to the Wall Street Journal, Gardini often was called “the farmer” because of his agribusiness background. In no way a bumpkin, however, he is a fighter not easily discouraged.

As Ferruzi chairman in 1989, the Journal said, Gardini had designs on cornering the U.S. soybean market--a charge Ferruzi denied--until the Chicago Board of Trade stepped in.

Later, he fought, in vain, his own Italian government over control of the country’s chemical business.

It’s only natural, then, that his lust for the fight and a lifelong passion for sailing would lead him to the America’s Cup, and that his disdain for nationalism would attract the best people available, regardless of countries of origin--a philosophy that his new neighbors, the nationalistic French, might not understand.

He has an American skipper and managing director, “El Capo”--Paul Cayard, 32, who speaks three languages, whose father was born in France and whose wife is Swedish, the daughter of Sweden’s greatest living sailor, Pelle Petterson. Raul and Paul have become a formidable team.

There also are an Argentine designer, German Frers; a Portuguese builder, Fernando Sena, and an Algerian-born French operations manager, Laurent Esquier.

Other Americans include navigator/technical director Robert Hopkins and coach John Kolius, and there are Australians, New Zealanders, a Dane, a Swede and two boatloads of Italians scattered among the hundred or so people who make this team the strongest threat in this century to spirit the Cup back to Europe where it started in 1851.

Most of all, despite the family upheaval, Gardini still has the backing of mighty Montedison, with its fierce lionesque sunburst logo and the full weight of its industrial power behind the effort, producing five carbon-fiber boats, equipped with carbon-fiber masts and carbon-fiber sails.

He names all his boats Il Moro di Venezia, even the 87-foot power yacht he has at his Shelter Island compound. He sits on the fantail, face to the morning sun, sipping cappuccino and talking about the campaign. He is wearing a tie, which does not rock the boat.

Question: What do they let you do as the 17th man?

Gardini: “I have no right to do anything . . . and I wouldn’t have anything to do, anyway.”

Q: Your press releases say this campaign started at the San Francisco Hyatt Hotel bar after you won the Maxi Worlds in ’88.

Gardini: “Si, but it was not really born there. It was focusing on the new target. We were talking with Iain Murray (of Australia), who was tactician on a maxi boat, and with Paul Cayard, German Frers. We (decided) that if the (America’s Cup) class was going to change, we were going to do that.”

Q: You wouldn’t have done it with the old 12-meters?

Gardini: “Dennis Conner and the commodore of the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda were still trying to keep the Cup in the 12-meter class.”

Q: And, of course, Murray went on to lead the development of the new International America’s Cup Class. Who picked up the check that night?

Gardini: “I’ve been paying the checks since 1974.”

Q: And this is the biggest. Did you realize at the beginning how much it would cost to stage a campaign for the America’s Cup?

Gardini: “I was imagining almost the same exact amount of money that we have spent so far. And we have been also favored by the favorable change of the dollar rate. When I made the budget four years ago I was considering a rate of 1,500 lire for one dollar, and we have had an average of 1,200. We saved 22 to 25% in our budget.”

Q: Which brings it to . . .

Gardini: “We (planned) a budget of between $30 and $40 million, and it was pretty close. It is 60 trillion lire.”

Q: Some outside estimates say you have spent as much as $120 million or more.

Gardini: “The pure cost of the challenge was absolutely $42 million. There are many other industrial investments, such as the (Tencara) boat yard, which are capital investments that stay there.”

Q: Did the shakeup in the family business ever threaten the project?

Gardini: “For a very few days . . . for about 20 days the challenge was in danger. More than in danger it was under discussion to define the borders, the roles.”

Q: And it was agreed that Ferruzi would allow Montedison to continue to sponsor the project, with you in charge?

Gardini: “Si.”

Q: What about Paul Cayard? That seems more of a personal than a business relationship.

Gardini: “I have known Paul (since) he was much younger. I saw that he was a very good skipper but also a very intelligent and sensitive man. We have built a very friendly relationship. We have begun to analyze and plan the situations together . . . what we need to do better.

“We talk very much not only of sailing but also of politics and how the world is changing. We have talked a lot about the United States, Europe and Russia. We have told a lot of stories to each other. I showed him how our world is in Europe.”

Q: Is it like a father-son relationship?

Gardini (frowning): “The age difference makes you think it could be, but in fact it’s more an intercultural relationship. Paul is a very curious man in that he wants to understand, wants to learn--and, for an older man, it’s a pleasure to explain how things work.”

Q: Do you resent it when he is called a “hired gun”?

Gardini: “I don’t feel he’s a hired gun. He has simply put his experience in this team, which is not only my team but is our team . . . (the property) of the many people who created it. This compound is our nation.”

Q: You seem to be regarded more as a European than an Italian. You live in France. On your boat you fly the European Community flag with the Italian emblem in one corner--not the Italian flag.

Gardini: “I consider myself a missionary for Europe. All my life I worked very hard to help create (the concept of the European Community). I began to work in this direction when I was very young, at the time of the Roman Treaty in 1962, when I was 25 . . . the first step toward the European Community.”

Q: If Il Moro wins the Cup, then, from an historical perspective, to whom will the victory belong--to Italy? To Paul Cayard? To Raul Gardini?

Gardini: “For the tradition, it belongs to the Compagnia della Vela di Venezia (yacht club).”

Q: Technically. But don’t you have an agreement with the club giving you control?

Gardini: “We’ll have the right to work with the Cup.”

Q: Will you have the right to defend it anywhere you want--even outside of Italy?

Gardini: “If the Cup is won by a French boat, it has to be defended in France. If an Italian boat wins, the Cup has to be defended in Italy.”

Q: In Venice?

Gardini: “It’s too soon to say.”

Q: How is the wind in Venice?

Gardini (laughing): “ Worse than here.”

Q: During the long, litigious process after the ’87 Cup, you became impatient and organized the European America’s Cup Class Association. Why? Did you plan to run your own event?

Gardini: “The assocation was a system created to face the existing lobby at that time. The Cup looked like it would become the property of New Zealanders, Australians, English and Americans. We were saying, ‘Hey, guys, we are here in the game, as well.’ ”

Q: What do you think is the best thing that could happen now, for the sake of the Cup?

Gardini: “This is the time for Europe. I hope. I’m supporting the French, also, if I had to choose a place where the Cup has to go. We would like to win the Cup in Italy, but if we don’t win, we would like the French to win.”

Q: Alan Bond tried four times before he won the Cup. Sir Thomas Lipton tried five times and never won it. This is Sir Michael Fay’s third try. If you don’t win it this time, will you continue to try?

Gardini: “No, we try to win this one.”

Q: You, Bill Koch and Michael Fay are similar. You’re all powerful and successful in business, and you all have the same idea: to win the Cup at almost any cost.

Gardini: “Our three syndicates are very different. Bill Koch has a very different approach than ours. I don’t know very much about Michael Fay’s approach. Our challenge is very well integrated as a team. This is the main characteristic of our challenge.”

Q: Each of your campaigns has much more money than that of Dennis Conner, whom many people think the America’s Cup is all about. Two of you will have to beat him--Koch first, then you or Fay or another challenger.

Gardini: “Dennis Conner . . . in Italian we have this expression, ‘The Old Fox.’ ”

Q: In English we have the same expression.

Gardini: “It’s hard to say this time whether being an old fox will be enough to win.”

Q: Are you saying, ‘Poor Dennis?’

Gardini: “I don’t spend one tear for Dennis. I like him very much because we have been sailing together so many times. He is a nice man. But I don’t suffer for him.”

Q: How well do you know Koch and Fay?

Gardini: “I know Bill Koch very well . . . since 1984 when he came onto the maxi-world circuit with Matador. I don’t know Michael Fay at all. I have seen how he runs his challenge, especially his experience with the San Diego Yacht Club and the controversy that came from that challenge (in ‘88). I think he did a very good job for the Cup. He was the man that permitted the Cup to change and improve.”

Q: There was an interview last year in which you referred to Koch as “a comic figure.” Did you underestimate him?

Gardini: “(In that interview) I didn’t want to mean that Bill Koch was a comic figure. I simply said that when he criticized the (IACC) class, saying the boats were ‘dangerous’ and the designers were ‘idiots,’ he was quite funny to criticize the class in that way. It’s obvious that these boats are fragile and you can break them.”

Q: There are three distinctions among you. Fay never rides on his boat. You ride but don’t have anything to do with the sailing. Koch not only rides but steers. And yet, Koch has been sailing only eight years. You have sailed since you were 12. Wouldn’t you be more qualified to steer?

Gardini: “If Bill Koch wins the America’s Cup as a helmsman, next time I will steer the boat.”

Raul Gardini’s remarks were translated from Italian by Il Moro public relations director Stefano Roberti.