Ernesto Bertarelli was a happy man last night — which makes a change. After watching Alinghi, the team he has bankrolled, level the 32nd America’s Cup at 2-2, the biotech billionaire said it was the holders’ best race. Even when Emirates Team New Zealand (ETNZ) lodged a protest over a technical violation of the rules, it failed to dampen his mood.

But his outburst after Tuesday’s race, which Alinghi lost to go 2-1 down, was another telling mark of the pressure that the holders — confident to the point of arrogance before the start — have been put under in this best-of-nine series.

Moreover, Bertarelli has presided over the birth of a fully fledged America’s Cup management structure that, much to his chagrin, is behaving independently. Peter “Luigi” Reggio, the principal race officer, got that third race off with one minute left of the allotted time, and Alinghi have allegedly told Reggio that he should offer his resignation.

Bertarelli, 41, sounded like a spoilt child who has had his toy taken away when he told the world that the third race should have been postponed because of the light oscillating winds.

Perhaps Bertarelli was not prepared for the light winds, as Dean Phipps, the Alinghi pitman, admitted. “I do a lot of racing in Lake Geneva, where it’s very flaky, and you do have shifts of 20 to 40 degrees at a time,” Bertarelli said. “I go to Las Vegas as well, which I enjoy a lot, but the America’s Cup for me is a different thing than what we had today. I don’t think the race committee should have started the regatta.

“We waited for two hours and one second before the 5 o’clock time line, we launch a regatta and one minute after the start we have a 20-degree shift. If Team New Zealand saw right, good on them. I’m sure for those who are watching, it’s exciting. But I think you can go to Las Vegas for that.”

ETNZ have been revelling in all this. Terry Hutchinson, the team’s tactician, could not suppress a smile yesterday when asked if he thought calling the wind was luck, even after yesterday’s defeat. “No, what else can he say? He loses races because of spectator wash [in the second race] and then the wind [in the third],” Hutchinson said. “It would be like us blaming the wind today. It probably shows they’re a little bunched — tense, nervous. They would prefer 14 knots of breeze because it suits their sailing style to always be in a drag race, this is probably the first time they’ve been in a race with a boat that’s even with them.”

Bertarelli has a lot of smart ideas about the America’s Cup, but predictable racing is not one of them. These boats should race in the more oscillating conditions of Tuesday more often, if this is to become a sport to be watched and not the jousting of billionaires.

Bertarelli, the only Swiss sailor on the Swiss boat, does not dislike ETNZ. After all, he saved them from financial ruin — after the cataclysmic 5-0 defeat by Alinghi — with a $10 million loan in 2003 before Emirates airline stepped in as primary sponsor. Bertarelli said that an America’s Cup without a team from New Zealand would be like a football World Cup without Brazil.

But there is little love lost between the two crews, perhaps not surprising, given that six of Alinghi’s 17-man crew were poached from Team New Zealand by Bertarelli for Alinghi in 2000.

But Bertarelli is not the only one feeling the pressure and there is more at stake than just the Auld Mug. Many team owners and sponsors expecting Alinghi to win and hold the 33rd America’s Cup in Valencia in 2009 are nervously shuffling their business plans as Auckland 2011 has reared its head.

“That does not give credit to the imaginative way that New Zealand would approach this race compared to Auckland four years ago,” an America’s Cup management source said. “There could be races here in Valencia, Dubai, some in Asia, all over the place in the build-up to the cup.”

Emirates, as sponsors, would certainly insist on a significant part in Dubai, but because a third of ETNZ’s budget of about £60 million is funded by the taxpayer, Auckland would have to stage the big races.