[quote=P.M.]Artemis AC36 Protocol Statement

I would expect any seasoned America's Cup team to issue something similar whether or not they actually felt that way. The entire event is one massive negotiation and leverage has to be established anywhere you can. In other words, Artemis would like to participate but "lets make sure we have a seat at the boat rule design table by dangling our participation decision". Or, possibly, they don't trust the defender to not bend rules in their favor so they want to try and leverage a chance to see as much under the hood of the design rule as possible.

That said, I imagine there is a significant vein of sailors that do actually feel that way about keeping the America's Cup about high performance/high speed and on the real cutting edge of sailing. It seriously has had a gigantic affect on foiling sailboats in the last decade.