Coutts may bow out

New Zealand sailor Russell Coutts is undecided on whether he will attempt a fifth America's Cup victory following Oracle's win in last month's controversial race.

Coutts played leading roles in New Zealand's successful America's Cup campaigns in 1995 and 2000 and the Swiss victory by Alinghi in 2003, before joining US billionaire Larry Ellison's Oracle for last month's event in Valencia, Spain.

"I'm still deciding what to do in the future," Coutts said in a New Zealand Herald report yesterday.

"I don't want to rush things on that. I've got a young family now and that's definitely a consideration."

Coutts, who remains as chief executive for the San Francisco-based Oracle team, is in New Zealand talking to teams taking part in the Louis Vuitton Trophy, America's Cup class regatta, about arrangements for the next America's Cup.

February's race was mired in legal wrangling, becoming a best-of-three series between Oracle and Alinghi in super-fast multi-hull boats.

Oracle's hard wing sail provided a crucial advantage and it easily beat Ernesto Bertarelli's Alinghi 2-0. But the next Cup is expected to be a more conventional multi-challenger event and 48-year-old Coutts said some important decisions will be made in the next few weeks.

"We have to announce a timeline for some of the key decisions like the venue, format, type of boats and so forth at the end of March," he said.

"We've been meeting some of the teams to get their ideas on some of the big issues to be sorted out."

He confirmed that Ellison's first choice of venue is San Francisco, home to Oracle's representative club the Golden Gate Yacht Club, and the next regatta is likely to be in 2013.