Locked doors forced Coutts and co to bolt

Russell Coutts, the New Zealand skipper of the Swiss challenge for the America's Cup, broke a three-year silence to reveal his motives for quitting his national team after leading them to victory in the 2000 America's Cup.

Coutts and his tactician Brad Butterworth became sporting outcasts in New Zealand and targets of a campaign of abuse when they left to join Ernesto Bertarelli's Alinghi team, which will take on Team New Zealand in this year's cup beginning on February 15.

Coutts said they quit Team New Zealand after failing to reach agreement over the management of the next defence with the trustees who controlled the syndicate. Their relationship broke down to such an extent that he and members of his crew were locked out of their base two days after their successful defence of the cup in 2000.

In his statement yesterday Coutts said he had faced "persistent obstruction, extraordinary secretiveness about financial dealings and hostility towards our taking on management responsibilities".

He went on: "It was symbolic of the prevailing attitude at the time that locks to the base were changed abruptly so that sailors who had been with Team New Zealand for more than a decade, including Brad, found themselves humiliatingly locked out."

In addition, the prospective management team of Coutts, Butterworth and Tom Schnackenberg were required to taken on a debt of NZ$5m (£1.65m) from the 2000 defence and a demand for NZ$2m (£660,000) more for charitable distribution.

Coutts and Butterworth were even prepared to face New Zealand's top television interrogator Paul Holmes in an effort to convey their side of this formerly one-sided story. They told of the precarious position they would have faced if they had accepted the previous trustees' demands.

The trust company owned Team New Zealand Ltd - whose directors were Sir Tom Clark, Roger France, Richard Green, Jim Hoare and John Lusk - the company appointed by the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron to defend the America's Cup.

Not merely would Coutts and Butterworth, as the new trustees, have to accept a huge debt from the previous defence, they were refused access to records to show how it had arisen and were required to accept any potential tax liability of the trust, without the trust quantifying the potential liability. They were also concerned that the charitable status of the trust would be challenged.

Their confidence was eroded when they were not invited to the announcement of the protocol for this year's cup. And after they had received an undertaking that no assets would be sold, the 1995 cup-winning yacht was disposed of to a foreign syndicate.

The New Zealand public, fuelled by a xenophobic media and unaware of the reasons for their move, has pilloried Coutts, Butterworth and the other four members of Team New Zealand who joined Alinghi in what was seen as a traitorous act.

Coutts and Butterworth had kept silent, despite threats to the safety of their families, because they had agreed to this condition at the time.

Coutts said he was "clearing the air" with the agreement of the Team New Zealand chief trustee John Risley before the best-of-nine series so that attention could be focused on the action on the water.