2003. Gianni Agnelli’s love for sailing and his boats

Welcome to the special section “GdV 5th Years.” We are introducing you, day by day, An article from the archives of the Journal of Sailing, starting in 1975. A word of advice, get in the habit of starting your day with the most exciting sailing stories-it will be like being on a boat even if you are ashore.

Good Wind Lawyer

Taken from the 2003 Journal of Sailing, Year 29, No. 02, March, pp. 48/52.

Gone is a great sailing enthusiast, Lawyer Gianni Agnelli. The Journal of Sailing remembers him through his incredible boats, moments and the men who marked his passion. And he reveals how Azzurra was born, when he said, “Yes let’s make the Italian America’s Cup.”

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Gianni Agnelli and sailing: love at first sight. As a true connoisseur, as a true aesthete. Boats, moments and men that marked his great passion.

The last statement Gianni Agnelli made about sailing, two months before he left, he dedicated to Team Prada. Late November. Luna Rossa had just beaten Sweden’s Orn in the second repechage race of the quarterfinals. The Advocate, however, was already looking beyond: “I think it will be more and more difficult for them to go aranti. When a boat changes its bow it means it has serious problems.” . A statement in pure Agnelli style: short, confident and unquestionably accurate. What’s more, issued at a time, the only time, when things were finally beginning to look up for De Angelis ‘ crew. Many. honestly. They had thought that then, once they reached the semifinals, Luna Rossa would be eliminated. No one, however, had had the courage to fearlessly go out on a limb like the Advocate. So many times his statements were as heavy as sentences. Sailing to helm, first with his Agneta, Capricia, the 12-meter Tomahawk and then with the maxi Extra Beat and Stealth, and sailing to watch as the America’s Cup were some of Agnelli’s strongest passions, like that for Ferrari and Formula 1, certainly less flaunted than that for soccer and Juventus. That for theAmerica’ Cup overwhelmed him in the 1960s, when he even asked his friend John Fitzgerald Kennedy (immortalized with him and Beppe Croce following the races in Newport in a famous photo) to help him in getting the New York YachtClub, holder of the silver jug, to accept an Italian challenge. The time was evidently not yet ripe, and such an honor was reserved only for Australians and Englishmen. That request to Kennedy, however, was followed up twenty years later. “For a country like Italy it is important to be present in the America’s Cup and do well,” was Agnelli‘s conviction.

All in the Marconi course

“It was the Avvocato who finally got the Azzurra project off the ground,” Cino Ricci recalls, “in the spring of 1981. Vallicelli asked him to get in touch with Agnelli, from whom he could request an interview through Walter Mandelli, then an advisor to Umberto Agnelli, as well as the owner of the Vanina of which Ricci was skipper. I left in my car from Forlì to visit him in his office, on the top floor of Fiat in Turin, Corso Marconi 12.” Agnelli listened in silence to Cino Ricci talking yarn for a full hour. Then, looking him straight in the eyeballs, he said, “All right, we’ll make this America’s Cup.” He picked up the phone on his desk and called Montezemolo, who was on the second floor, asking him to come up. “They immediately wrote a list of people and companies to be involved in the project,” Ricci continues, ” among them were lveco, Cinzano, Barilla and others. Then. Agnelli asked Ricci what sailing club he was planning to launch the challenge with. “The Italian Yacht Club,” replied the skipper. “No, those guys will never get a penny out. I know an enthusiastic young man.” So, for the second time, Agnelli picked up the phone and called theAga Khan. He could not find him because the latter was in Africa, but the lawyer had made up his mind: Azzurra would race for the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda.

Charisma and cunning

Pasquale Landolfi also recalls how Agnelli ‘s firsthand interest was instrumental in the birth of Azzurra: “He set everyone up already at the first meeting.” That first meeting took place in the late spring of 1981 at the headquarters of Fabbri Editori, near Linate, Milan. “The Advocate arrived by helicopter and was very interested in the fact that I was able to buy the 12-meter Enterprise from the New York Yacht Club. Back then it was not like today, buying a used boat from a yacht club that had won the America’s Cup was not easy.” . Having the feeling that after that first meeting many of the industrialists present would either not show up again or would spend too much time making a decision. Agnelli used his cunning and charisma. “He proposed to everyone to immediately sign a surety bond of 250 million each,” Landolfi recalls amusedly, ” he asked this with a very easy and calm manner that none of those present felt like making a bad impression and backing down in front of the lawyer, perhaps opposing him.Thus finally set off the Azzurra adventure, in which Agnelli never expounded much, leaving theAga Khan in the foreground. “The Advocate was someone with too many interests to follow a project of three years as many as an America’s Cup campaign requires,”Landolfi explains. In long-term projects he was bored. For his pace of life, three years was three hundred for a normal person. He was a lover of sailing, but he played it like maestro Von Karajan, who would go out on a boat between concerts. Agnelli then built his own boats for fun, such as the Stealth, on which he would go out, however, two hours and then get back on maybe two months later.

A gift to the Navy

That Agnelli was a true lover of his boats is beyond doubt. In 1993 he donated his Capricia to the Navy. It was a gesture of esteem toward the corps that devotes its activity to the sea, but certainly also of great affection toward his boat, which he would have suffered to see in someone else’s hands (when he sold Extra Beat he imposed on its new owner, a wealthy U.S. industrialist, never to come sailing in the Mediterranean). “The Capricia has been perfectly preserved as it was handed over to us ten years ago by the Avvocato and is used as a school boat and for training activities around the world,” says Commander Angelo Lattarulo, ” she is a very fast hull, she is included in the AIVE circuit and still wins many regattas. This eagerness of Agnelli to burn everything out is also witnessed by Cino Ricci: ” From Azzurra onward, the Advocate and I dated for many years. I often slept over at his house and we went to Juventus games. We traveled a lot, including to Portugal and Spain, where we would go by boat on his Capricia, Agneta and Extra Beat. We would only be gone one day, two at the most. The Lawyer was a quick-witted guy, he wanted adrenaline, he loved the lurching boat, maneuvering in difficult conditions. If there was wind you went out to sea, otherwise you went home. He didn’t like to dangle in the becalmed, he didn’t like the boat to read a book like maybe Gardini did. Even in Newport, when we were there with Azzurra, we would go out all day at sea to train. Sometimes he would come with us and just do a couple of edges. Then, dressed only in jeans and a T-shirt, he would go up on deck, wave, dive into the sea, and get picked up by the speedboat that was following us. One day, he brought along an American friend of his, who, however, was dressed in full gear. He. as usual, after a few turns dived into the sea and left. The American asked me where Agnelli had gone. Home, I answered him. Then he asked me how long we would be out at sea, and I said, Until tonight. So even that poor fellow had to throw himself into the sea with all the nice suit and get recovered by the speedboat to go back ashore with the Lawyer.”

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Sympathy for Soldini

Agnelli ‘s jokes will always remain famous. Even those addressed to Giovanni Soldini. Extraordinary was the one made after the Italian sailor saved Frenchwoman Isabelle Autissier from shipwreck during the third leg of theAround Alone: “Soldini is the only man capable of finding a woman even in the middle of the ocean.” Another quip: “I would love to go sailing with him, but I’m afraid he prefers to go alone.” A reference to Soldini ‘s solo sailing activity. “I would have loved to go sailing with the Avvocato, but unfortunately we never managed to do it because of our respective commitments,” confesses Soldini, who occasionally received a few phone calls from Agnelli. “Once it was to propose that I participate in the record attempt of an Atlantic crossing with his Stealth, but a series of setbacks prevented me from granting his request. The Stealth was a very curious person and wanted to know things up close. A few months after I had launched the trimaran, he was returning from England where Stealth had won the Fastnet and decided to land with his helicopter in La Rochelle where we were working on the boat. He wanted to meet me and see the boat, but unfortunately I was in Lorient that day.” .

The last phone call

That Atlantic record, to break which he specially had Stealth built, he never managed to set. On the other hand, in August 2001, he took two fine satisfactions: his black boat, entrusted to Ken Read and with his beloved nephews John and Lapo Elkann aboard, won the Fastnet in real time and, a few days later, the race around the Isle of Wight, organized to celebrate 150 years of the America’s Cup. As chance would have it, that same Sunday, Michael Schumacher became Formula 1 world champion. In recent months, due to illness, Agnelli had been forced to follow the America’s Cup away from Auckland, “I regret not being able to see Luna Rossa as closely as last time.” In early 2000, the Avvocato had flown to New Zealand where he spent a good two weeks with the crews, having a good time and firing off rapid-fire jokes. He followed the competition offshore through binoculars, then in the evenings met Francesco De Angelis (“I’ve known him since Azzurra, but he was too young then”), asked Torben Grael for explanations, got to know people like Ken Read himself (then on Stars & Stripes), and amiably teased Patrizio Bertelli: “He reminds me so much of Gattamelata, a captain of fortune who won merits on the field.” The last time the Advocate phoned Auckland was to regret Luna Rossa‘s elimination. Then he asked, “But are the New Zealanders still the strongest?”

A.F.

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