Britain's Team Origin is still an offical challenger, but is running in almost skeleton form, sidelined by the legal tussle between Ellison and the holder, Ernesto Bertarelli's Swiss-based Alinghi. Its boss, Sir Keith Mills, told The Independent months ago that he could foresee a future without an America's Cup until 2013.

For sure, an event which dates back to 1851 will, eventually, be revived and the competition will be as top-level and inspiring as it always has been. But, if it remains in the organisational hands of people who think first commercially and only second about sporting integrity then it will take many years to regain the status and recognition that has drained so rapidly and spectacularly into the sand over the last 12 months.

Much pious talk is talked about dragging the event first through the 20th century and then into the 21st. But the talk ends when it comes to organisation and, more importantly, control. For 25 years the common sense argument has been that the America's Cup should be run by an independent body. There are even those who recently have put forward the idea as though it was their own and original, the same people who ran the fiefdom with the same red-necked belligerence when it was theirs to control.

Lord knows, sailing lurches from one pinnacle proposition to another, leaving even sailing enthusiasts scratching their heads; general sporst fans are just plain bewildered. With more and more events from more and more countries available to a worldwide audience 24 hours a day then making it hard for the wider audience to understand will not result in it making a greater effort. The wider audience will hit the zapper and turn to something else.

It is almost beyond belief that, while the Israelis can hold talks both in public and behind the secenes with the Palestinians, possibly even the Iranians, that two yacthing syndicates cannot talk to each other. There is no system of mediation, no-one has emerged as a credible mediator, and this is a sailboat race. But the Clintons, Carters, Blairs, even Mandelas could not bang these heads together.

As Cowes progresses towards a spectcular firework climax of 14 years' sponsorship by a Southampton-based Skandia company now swallowed up by a South Africa-based Old Mutual, attention switches to the opening of the Olympic Games and sailors tune in to the race course at Qingdao.

So far, the only thing the public has seen is a picture of man almost entirely draped in green, seaweed-like algae, aplague of which invaded the race tracks. A heroic effort to clear it not unlike the thousands brought in to build the pyramids has had some beneficial effect but has not been the total answer.

What the public has not seen is that the rules, which normally require at least five of an 11 to 16-race series to be raced in order to constute a valid series have been changed so that just one race constitutes a series. Nor is everybody technically aware enough to work out the significance of the regatta being staged at the time when there are the strongest spring tides of the year and, normally, the winds are very light.

So, between the Chinese authorities, the International Olympic Committee and the International Sailing Federation, the most important regatta of four years is being staged in green slime, no wind and on a lottery race track.

Somehow or another, yachting at its top level is lacking in leadership and clever management. The public, so often cited as being so important but whose interests are so quickly discarded, deserves better than this.