It's killing me how Alinghi refuses to come to the table on this. Frankly, I don't think they have any choice to any other date and that the courts will second that notion especially given the number of times BMW tried to offer up several date options up until the last motion by Alinghi. BMW did indicate going into these negotiations that if the date was going to move that Alinghi would have to barter with something...location of the event, parameters of the event like a max wind speed, different race series (than the three specified in the deed). Why won't Alinghi negotiate ANYTHING?
In my opinion, Alinghi is trying desperately to get the event in Valencia in 2009 to try and meet some contractual obligations they made when the boofed this whole thing up in the beginning.
Grant Dalton, of Team New Zealand had this to say yesterday:
‘Alinghi created this environment we are in. Oracle can and should give them no favours, because there have certainly been no favours given to them, or any of us, by Alinghi.
‘Oracle’s intention was to get this back on a regular footing with rules that were more fair to everybody. That whole strategy is still in place.’
‘It is very frustrating when Alinghi who are slowly but surely getting punished, stuck with their stance of non-negotiation, and would probably have had to give away about half a marble of their from their bag of 100 marbles to get the whole thing back on track in October last year.'
