Umpiring was the one of the great legacies from several America’s Cup officials including Australia’s own Graeme Owens.

Graeme Owens’ deep involvement with the America’s Cup continued over ten years, from rules advice to the 1983 Cup team, four years solid work with the portfolio of ‘Race Administration’ on the 1987 Cup Defence Committee, 1987 Defence Series jury chairman in Fremantle, consultant to the San Diego club planning the infamous ‘big boat/catamaran’ fiasco, three busy years on the 1992 America’s Cup Challengers’ Committee, then jury chairman and chief umpire for the Louis Vuitton series in San Diego.  After that Graeme happily shut (slammed) the door on all things America’s Cup.

How the Cup lit the Umpiring Fuse

Many of the numerous 1987 Defender Series protests in Fremantle went all night, resulting in the vast media contingent pulling its hair out at not being able to publish the last day’s results until the next morning.  All showed their frustration and anger at this including the IYRU which cried to us “Do something! Find a way to speed up decisions!”  So, Graeme Owens (from defenders) and Tom Ehmann (from challengers) went to the 12 metre Worlds in Sardinia where on the course they stood at the bows of a ship to experiment whether making on-water rules decisions could somehow be practicable.

From that seed things grew with a flourish.  Steps were rapid as umpiring was being moulded.  There came meetings in Southampton, lots of testing of various methods during the Congressional Cup, then an Appendix C, an Umpires’ Manual, Graeme wrote the first Call Book (initially used at the 1992 America’s Cup), umpiring qualifications were introduced, IYRU International Umpiring Seminars were presented (of which Graeme conducted 18).  The umpiring explosion had gone off, and now its result on worldwide judging and match racing is clear to see.

Should sportsmanship apply only to the Sailors?

Graeme related an interesting story on Cup behaviour.  One of Graeme’s roles leading to the 1987 Cup was to prepare new ‘interpretations’ then to write the formal Cup ‘Conditions’ and negotiate these with the Challenger of Record.  This gave Graeme a degree of freedom, so here was Australia’s opportunity to act like past Cup holders and steer matters towards the defender’s favour.  The policy to be adopted by Royal Perth Yacht Club was debated by his Cup Committee and after consideration the decision was made that it would run a squeaky clean event, just as if they were completely impartial event organisers and not members of Royal Perth Yacht Club, thus giving the Australian defence none of any potential advantages.

For the 1992 America’s Cup Graeme now wore the opposite hat. He was now representing the Challenger of Record in negotiating the Conditions with the new holders of the Cup. Prior to and during that ’92 event he found actions and behaviour of some of the defender organisation so distasteful he finally said to a well-known Cup identity in San Diego “Some matters here are shameful. In Fremantle we deliberately ran the Cup ‘straight down the line’ without any bias.”

The answer came with a sympathetic tap on the shoulder: “We know you did.  And that’s why you lost the Cup.”