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A curious thing has just happened to the Bol d’Or sailing race. An essentially local dispute about the crew of one of the boats surfaced Monday and by midnight last night the Tribune de Geneve, true to its status of city newspaper, had interviewed two of the main characters and published a story. In the process, by grinding it down to a tit-for-tat argument among clicky boat owners on Lake Geneva, with the America’s Cup legal battle as the dramatic background, the newspaper has inadvertently made the event sound to non-locals like a small club feud. The newspaper’s English page, based on the French story, in fact refers only to a "local competition" for D35s and never mentions that it is part of the Bol d’Or.

The D35 catamaran races are just one in a group of Bol d’Or races, albeit one of the more glamorous bits. The Bol d’Or itself is Europe’s largest enclosed water regatta and a hugely popular European event.

The dispute over Russell Coutts and a BMW Oracle team appearing in the D35 race is indeed local. What a shame it would be if the colourful annual Bol d’Or was perceived, even locally, to be small and petty as a result.

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