Find an Italian
Talc'
New York
The New York Yacht Club is located west of New York's Fifth Avenue, but that is its only drawback. Although some members think that its proximity to the New York Times building is a disaster, I for one will not go as far. I know that tenden- tiousness and double standards are social diseases that cannot be caught, especially by my fellow members of the Yacht Club. In the Commodore's Room last week, its walls lined with stern portraits of former commodores, an impeccably dressed Italian farceur described how Italy intended to take away from my club the Americas' Cup. If any of you haven't heard of my Club's trophy you should be ashamed. It's the one that the teamaker Lipton tried like hell to win for over a decade and that a pre- sent nouveau by the name of Peter Un- savoury has decided belongs to England. (If you think times have changed, you're right. Lipton, the teamaker, had Edward, Prince of Wales launch some of his yachts that were to challenge for the Cup. Unsavoury, the real estate promoter, has chosen Princess Michael of Kent).
I call the sartorially triumphant little Italian a farceur because, like a lot of his countrymen, he takes liberties with people's intelligence. During his press conference, and while he sat in my father's favourite armchair, the farceur revealed that although he was the nominal head of the challenging group, the real sponsor is the man who has the last foolproof method of earning money — collecting it frorn the proffers of the faithful — the last naive Moslems left on earth, the Ismaelis who believe him to be God, the Aga Khan.
Now I have written about the awful Aga before on these pages, therefore I shall be brief. Sponsoring the challenge is a consor- tium of 16 businesses and banking interests, with Karim at the head. Although one is not exactly supposed to make money out of a challenge — in fact the contrary — know- ing Karim, he will end up getting millions of pounds worth of publicity out of it for his Sardinian resort, the Costa Smeralda, known among people who know about such things as the world's most expensive and most dangerous playground. The banking interests who are putting up some of the money for the Cup are the same ones who put up some of the money for Karim to build his little resort. 'Well, guys, now that we have finished selling houses that cannot be sold back, why don't we build a boat that will cost a lot, sell for little, and get us a lot of publicity?'
America's 131-year hold on the Cup is the longest winning streak in sporting likely to happen as Karim to start paying his get more publicity than say, Jackie Of Caroline Grimaldi?
What surprises me, however, it the fact that the Italians, a proud people, have allowed themselves to be conned by Karim. After all, when the living God couldn't make the British team in Alpine skiing one year, he switched and made — Yes, you guessed it — the Iranian one. Two years later the British were all out on strike and Karim managed to get into it. (I was in the Greek team that year, 1962, and guess who beat me in the slalom and gian slalom and who I wiped out where it counted — the downhill? Yes, you're right: Karim.) WhY should an ex-Iranian national, holding 8 British passport and resident in France be the head of the Italian challenge? Well, the smart Alecs will say it is as head of the Yacht Club in Porto Cervo that he it challenging. Bull, I say. Get a real Italian to head some Yacht Club and to do the challenging. One that does not have to advertise anything or feel the need to sell a product.
The Americas' Cup is the last pure sport left on this not so pure earth. Let us not get men like the Aga involved. If the Italians are so anxious to challenge, and if they're unable to find a pure sailing amateur, I sug" gest my father. He's a great sailor, has won many races, used to own a great 12-metre yacht, and has nothing to sell. He also knows a lot of Italians and he likes them. He met most of them in Albania in 1940.
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