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OneWorld penalised by one point

OneWorld will start the competition with a negative score

AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- America's Cup hopeful OneWorld Challenge has been penalised one point by the Cup's Arbitration Panel before the competition has begun.

The Seattle-based syndicate was penalised for possessing design information and drawings from three other teams.

"Launching us into the upcoming Louis Vuitton Cup with a one-point penalty, especially among this extremely strong group of challengers, is tough," said OneWorld Challenge's chief executive Gary Wright.

The arbitration panel released its long-awaited decision after all the syndicates had agreed that they would not sue the judges in case of an adverse judgement.

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The panel's view was that there was not sufficient evidence to suggest that it was an "intentional illegal act" by OneWorld to obtain the information, accepting OneWorld's assertion that the personnel they had hired from other syndicates had brought the material with them.

The five-man panel, who are in charge of interpreting the Protocol rules of the America's Cup, felt that a monetary fine for a syndicate backed by two billionaires, Craig McCaw and Paul Allen, was not harsh enough.

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The judgement said: "A financial penalty, in the Panel's view, does not sufficiently emphasise the seriousness of the breaches or the necessary deterrent element."

The penalty means that OneWorld will forfeit the score from one race win from Round Robins One and Two of the Louis Vuitton Cup which begins on October 1.

OneWorld Challenge was also instructed to pay the costs of $13,500.

Only one of the nine challenging syndicates will be sent home after the two Round Robin series are completed on the November 1. OneWorld is one of the favourites with designer Laurie Davidson from the winning Team New Zealand yacht of 2000.

In the 2000 America's Cup Dennis Conner's Stars & Stripes was penalised one point for building a rudder in Australia and lost out to Prada on entry to the semifinals by just one point.

In mitigation the panel accepted that it was OneWorld that had brought the issue to the panel after their former team member Sean Reeves was caught trying to sell the information to other teams. Had it not done so, the panel said that a more severe penalty would have been warranted.

A civil case brought by OneWorld against Reeves for breach of confidentiality agreements will be heard in the US courts in January.

After the judgement Wright said: "We always believed we were doing the right thing coming forward and bringing these issues before the panel to get them resolved once and for all.'"

"I think it was a fair decision. The panel found that OneWorld wasn't doing anything intentionally illegal," said Wright.

OneWorld admitted it had measurement certificates for the winning Team New Zealand 2000 boats, carbon fibre material certificates, tank-testing photographs and a deck layout plan for NZL60. They also said that they had sail information from Prada and design information from America True, but asserted the material was not significant, was gained inadvertently and was never used

The Panel said that a deterrent penalty was necessary to emphasise that syndicates who engages a designer from another syndicate in a current or past America's Cup contest must ensure that the designer has no relevant design information in his possession.