"I wouldn't be involved if it were just a yacht race," said John Bertrand, chair and chief visionary of the One Australia yacht team and the only non- American winner of the America's Cup in its 132-year history. "We must create an awareness and a revolution of technology in Australian society."
In the world of America's Cup racing, a one percent performance advantage is decisive. Bertrand, who holds a master's degree in Ocean Engineering from MIT, realized that he could tap a wide range of technologies - supercomputers, advanced material composites, virtual reality, and computational fluid dynamics programs - to develop a winning racing boat. He broke with tradition by hiring Australian software entrepreneur Alan Ramadan as managing director of the team. Ramadan, an outsider to the world of America's Cup campaigns, impressed Bertrand with his extensive Unix software background, his commercial time-to-market orientation, and his strong relationships with the global technical community.
With less than two years remaining before the next America's Cup trials (held every three to four years), Bertrand continues to persuasively extol One Australia's effort as a metaphor for the larger global technology race in which his country must successfully compete. Quietly but confidently, Bertrand predicts victory in both races. "One Australia will win the America's Cup and transform this country by the year 2000," he claims calmly. According to the man who a decade ago united Australia with a stunning come-from-behind victory in the America's Cup, the winds that may carry One Australia to triumph in San Diego in 1995 may also blow across the vast continent, once again catalyzing an entire nation.
- Paul Zuber
ELECTRIC WORD
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