Espionage between teams, a classic of the Copa América

Updated:02/07/2020 09:52h

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The case of leaks of secrets unveiled on Monday by Emirates Team New Zealand is one of many that have been recorded for decades in the Copa América, a competition in which much money is invested in technological development.

Small innovations can provide great advantages to competitors, and espionage and leaks increase as teams prepare their boats before the first test in December.

For participants, knowing what their opponents are doing is as important as their own program.

The fact that Emirates Team New Zealand, as the defender of the title, has had the right to have the 22.90 meter long AC75 monohull with ‘foils’ used for the competition has increased the need for knowledge of its rivals.

Emirates Team New Zealand announced earlier this week the firing of a contractor company for alleged leaks of secrets from its base in Auckland Harbor for several months.

The unidentified company had access to its entire base on Hasley Street. New Zealand team general manager Grant Dalton said they had been suspicious for six months and that the harbor base had been electronically ‘swept’ twice so that ‘hackers’ could not penetrate the systems and both had come back negative. .

The Copa América is considered one of the great sporting events in the world and already in the 1980s and 1990s, when New Zealand entered the fight to win the race, several espionage scandals arose that forced the organizers to ban various forms of monitoring teams.

In 1983 Australian crews detained a Canadian diver near its docks in Newport, USA, where ‘Australia II’ was moored with its secret winged keel underwater. The Australians won and ended America’s 132-year-long dominance in the Cup.

American magnate Bill Koch, owner of the ‘America3’ team at the 1992 edition of the San Diego Cup, left electronic buoys near the racing fields in an effort to assess the speed of the boats. rivals.

In that edition of the Cup, several teams used helicopters to take aerial photos of the competitors’ boats, trying to discover the hidden appendages of their boats.

One of the most prominent cases occurred in the 2003 edition in Auckland (New Zealand), when classified information from the American union ‘OneWorld’ was offered to its other American rival ‘Oracle’ for $ 2.5 million.

The offer included secret details about the hull design, the team’s navigation techniques, and information from team members. In a gesture of sportsmanship, ‘Oracle’ did not accept it and denounced those who tried to sell them the information.

But ten years later, earlier in the edition of San Francisco (United States) in 2013, the same ‘Oracle’ was sanctioned for irregularly modifying his ships in the World Cup Series, days before the end of that edition

A two-point sanction was imposed before the start of the final, the team was fined $ 250,000, three crew members were expelled and a fourth suspended. It was the harshest punishment in the 162-year history of the Copa América.

The Australian James Spithill, twice winner of the America’s Cup (2010 and 2013), who will be the patron of the ‘Luna Rossa-Prada’ in this edition, has explained that “You can learn a lot from rivals and that’s what this is about in this game: you can look at your competitors and not only take their navigation lessons but also improve them”.

The irony of this latest scandal is that the New Zealand team has been the victim of espionage at a time when they had worked hard to relax some of the surveillance rules surrounding the Cup.

Ships are now positioned in their dock cradles without skirts to hide sensitive hulls or appendage designs. In addition, teams can film the training of their rivals.