We are often asked for a quick rundown on each of the twelve teams competing in AC32. Here is a good summary that ran in today's Washington Post, written by Angus Phillips. The full article is worth reading, and is available here. Note that in the summary below France (Areva) is a bit out of date -- they anounced on Friday Thierry Peponnet had been excused from further participation as skipper, to be replaced by his tactician Sebastian Col.


America's Cup Teams
by Angus Phillips, Washington Post Outdoor Editor

USA
BMW Oracle is the second Cup attempt of San Francisco software billionaire Larry Ellison, whose Oracle entry made it to challenger finals in 2003. The team will spend more than $100 million and build two new boats in this attempt, with four-time Cup skipper Chris Dickson of New Zealand at the helm, Frenchman Bertrand Pace calling tactics and Ellison himself steering "when Chris lets me."

NEW ZEALAND
Emirates Team New Zealand is a fully funded, two-boat campaign headed by Grant Dalton, one of the island nation's most famous offshore sailors. Skipper Dean Barker returns from the Kiwis' unsuccessful Cup defense in 2003, with American Terry Hutchinson of Annapolis calling tactics and U.S. Olympian Kevin Hall navigating.

SOUTH AFRICA
Shosholoza is a small-budget campaign headed by Salvatore Sarno, chief of the team's co-sponsor, Mediterranean Shipping Co. Italian-born match-racer Tomasso Chieffi does the driving after countryman Paolo Cian finishes the prestart. Shosholoza takes its name from a 200-year-old song sung by workers on the way to the South African gold mines.

FRANCE
Areva Challenge is sponsored by the global nuclear energy company by the same name and has French Olympian and Cup veteran Thierry Peponnet at the helm. It's a fully funded, one-boat campaign. Dawn Riley, who was on the 1992 Cup-winning America 3 team and the 1995 women's team Mighty Mary, runs the sailing program.

SPAIN
The entry of the host nation is a fully funded, two-boat effort with strong support from the national government and from King Juan Carlos, a keen competitive sailor. The king christened the first new Spanish boat in May; a second is in the works. Polish match-racing champion Karol Jablonski steers.

SWEDEN
Victory Challenge returns from an effort in 2003 that was marred by the death of its founder and chief sponsor, wealthy media magnate Jan Stenbeck, who suffered a heart attack just before racing began. His son, Hugo, has taken over the reins with continuing backing from the family businesses. Skipper is Swedish Olympian Magnus Holmberg.

ITALY
Luna Rossa: The third straight Cup effort from Patrizio Bertelli of the Prada fashion dynasty is rated one of the top three challengers. Bertelli's first Luna Rossa raced against Team New Zealand in the Cup match in 2000; his second was a challenger semifinalist in 2003. Skipper Francesco de Angelis gets help this time from highly regarded, 27-year-old Australian match-racer James Spithill. Luna Rossa will build two new boats for 2007.
Mascalzone Latino: The second Cup effort by Italian ferryboat magnate Vicenzo Onorato has built one new boat for 2007 and is considering a second. The mostly Italian crew is headed by skipper Vasco Vascotto.
Plus 39: A small-budget, one-boat, first-time challenge that takes its title from the telephone dialing code for Italy. Team is led onboard by two British Olympians, gold medalist Iain Percy at the helm and two-time silver medalist Ian Walker calling tactics.

CHINA
Asked about the budget for this first-ever Cup team from China, French-born skipper Pierre Mas just laughed and shook his head. The team is building a hull at bargain basement rates in China and may attach the deck from its training boat, the old French war horse Le Defi. Mas has four or five Chinese nationals on the crew; the challenge is considered a first step in the learning process.

GERMANY
Danish Olympian and America's Cup veteran Jesper Bank is skipper of the fully funded United Internet Team Germany, first Cup challenge from Germany. The team has been training in a cast-off Italian Cup boat while awaiting arrival of its new boat this year. The Germans will host a three-boat regatta with BMW Oracle and Shosholoza in Kiel in August.

SWITZERLAND
Swiss defender Alinghi easily won the Cup from Team New Zealand, 5-0, in Auckland in 2003 after dominating challenger trials. Skipper Russell Coutts later left, creating a void being filled by tactician Brad Butterworth of New Zealand and helmsmen Jochen Schuemann of Germany, Peter Holmberg of the U.S. Virgin Islands and Ed Baird of Florida. Who will emerge as leader remains to be seen, but Alinghi is blessed with money to build two new boats and the benefits of being defender, which means no racing against the rest of the fleet is required until the best-of-nine Cup match next June.


Will one of the eleven Challengers relieve Alinghi from the
burden of holding the Cup?

There are a number of posts yesterday and today on the Challenger Commission Blog that may be of interest to team members.


Link me all over.

OK, given all the Kiwis, Aussies and Americans on our team, probably more of us follow rugby or American "gridiron" football than soccer-football.

But we also have a large number of Europeans and Latin Americans on our team, especially Germans. So with the "Football World Cup" due to start in Deutschland later this week, it seems only fair to give this some electronic ink here on the BOB.

For the record the 32 teams that have qualified:


Seven of the ten countries with AC32 teams are represented, so over the next few weeks we would expect some friendly World Cup rivalries developing among our teams here in VLC. FIFA's official website is particularly good.

Given the June-July schedule of the World Cup matches, the timing of Act 12 came in for much debate among ACM, the Defender and the Challenger of Record when we were setting AC 32 up in 2003-04. We knew we wanted Act 12, if possible, to be a dress-rehearsal for the grand finale in 2007. That meant running Act 12 as nearly as possible over the same dates in 2006 (with hopefully the same wind/weather) as the LVC finals and AC Match in 2007. But we realized that would place Act 12 in the midst of the World Cup elims.

Would that be bad for Act 12 TV coverage? Some said "for sure, yes" as we might not be able to get the airtime, and it was assumed most would rather tune in the World Cup games. Others said it would actually be good for the AC, given the propensity of TV viewers (especially men) these days to channel surf. "Get them in front of their tubes watching the World Cup, get the AC televised live at the same time, and you will end up with more eyeballs than would otherwise catch the AC on TV."

We'll see. It will also help if the ACTV production is particularly good. The jury's still out on that (and our Challenger Commission colleagues will appreciate the pun).

Having Act 12 during the World Cup has hurt the VIP guest counts expected by other teams, or so we hear. Not so for BMW ORACLE. Mirko Groeschner (GER, marketing director) reports we have even more VIP-guests booked for Act 12 than we had for Acts 10 and 11. Great news, and nice work by our sponsor-partners and marketing team.

And there's also BMW ORACLE Racing action in New York City the last two weeks of June (stay tuned -- suffice for now to say we'll be blogging from NYC 12-16 June).

So with five days to go to the first match, likely this is the BOB's one-and-only post on the Beautiful Game's 2006 World Cup. Meanwhile, Ian "Fresh" Burns (AUS, design coordinator) and his Aussie mates will be cheering on their entry, as will some of the less-parochial Americans if our highly ranked (for the first time) USA national squad does well. Juan K (ARG, design team) will be leading the charge for the Argentine side, our French Connection is of course led by Laurent Esquier (FRA/USA, operations director) and Bert Pace (FRA, sailing team). Kazuhiko Sofuku (JPN, sailing team) and Craig Christensen (NZL, sailing ops, but his partner is Japanese and he speaks the lingo) are our fans for Japan. All our Spanish colleagues are aficionados, especially Team Doc Francisco "Kiko" Espi-Escriva. And the aforementioned mega-fan Mirko will be commuting up to Germany for a match or two whenever Dicko gives him a 36-hour pass out of VLC.

Many of our families will be following the World Cup action on TV as a number of our kids are playing soccer-football on youth/school teams here in Valencia. And after all, like the America's Cup, it is a Beautiful Game.


An approach road to one of the stadiums in Germany where the matches
are to take place has this clever archway in celebration of the World
Cup. Photo courtesy of Valencia Life.


The French Connection lunching together at our Base last week. Were
they talking about their highly rated World Cup team? Or our team's
highly-regarded Austrian/Kiwi cuisine? Vive le schnitzel!

VLC 1900 Wednesday

Every sailor and race organizer knows how hectic the days are immediately before most any regatta, especially the day before. The AC is no exception, indeed more so because of the attendant media and sponsor activities that involve, directly or indirectly, so many members of our team.

(Speaking of media activities, you gotta know that the Cup is making real strides, and penetrating new markets, when our CEO and Skipper is a headliner on the South Asian Women's Forum! And check out the nice coverage the Valencia Sailing website gave to Dicko's briefing for the media at our Base this morning, including an audio track of Chris being interviewed by Marketing Director Mirko Groeschner.)

The good news is that the 12+ hour workdays that many of our colleagues have been putting in for the past week or so come to an end tonight. Once the racing starts tomorrow a certain race-day rhythm takes hold and the days become shorter and more regular.

The crew had a brief but productive sail this afternoon to be sure everything about 87, and themselves, was as race-ready as possible. It was a beautiful day weather- and wind-wise, and I saw a lot of smiles when they docked back in. The crew were done and out of the base early so they could have a quiet, restful evening before the big show begins tomorrow. Other departments are now winding down their various regatta-eve meetings, and last-minute touch-ups.

This evening the "External Affairs" department (of one) has several agreements hanging fire among the teams and organizers that are still being negotiated or otherwise need final signatures from the relevant parties. The issues are wide ranging -- from jury quorum to team photographers going aloft in helicopters. But somehow, before 1400 tomorrow, we'll get there.

In the meantime, Regatta Director Dyer Jones has just issued the Act 10, Race Day 1 pairing list, and we are pleased once again to make these available to you each day throughout the regatta.

With a tip of the BMWOR cap to Bob and all of our friends in the 2007AC Forums, "Let's regatta!"


Dicko's wife Sue finally got an 18th man ride
during the crew's short sail this afternoon. An
accomplished racing sailor in her own right, Sue
got a turn on the wheel of the yacht she
christened 29 March, and on which our team's
hopes ride in the upcoming Acts.

It's a warm, sunny day here in Valencia. Should be a good seabreeze this afternoon. The swell and chop from the recent stormy weather should have largely abated.

Yesterday all the teams were afloat except China Team and +39. This morning I can see from my office window here at the Team Base the flurry of ACC-yacht launchings taking place around the Port America's Cup -- so it should be more of the same intensive activity on the water today. +39 has been sailing on and off, and one hears China Team will be sailing by the end of the week, making it a full house.

There is a fair bit of intra- and inter-team racing going on each day, with a number of "friendly" match-ups taking place -- at least among the Challengers. So far, Alinghi has just been training by themselves. Maybe they prefer that to showing their hand too early to any of the Challengers.

Have been asked overnight about the various media reports that say we, too, now have a jumperless rig. Sorry, but we don't normally confirm or deny such reports when it involves possible technical developments.


Office with a view: Clear blue sky should help generate a nice
afternoon seabreeze.

Many will find helpful the schedule of Key Dates (now through the end of AC 32) posted today on the Challenger Commission Blog.

Story on our main team website.

As you will have read on our main team website, our new ACC yacht (USA-XX as it is being called for now -- we have yet to disclose the sail number that has been assigned to it) arrived this afternoon by cargo plane on a non-stop 13-hour flight from Seattle. By 2100 it was safe and sound in the boat shed at our Team Base.

It is not the first time an ACC yacht has been flown; a number were shipped by plane from Europe for the Cups in both San Diego and Auckland.

Notable, however, is that it got here before a number of other new ACC yachts which would have been under construction earlier. Moreover, it was in the shed here in VLC before a single word about it appeared on any website. Nice work team!


VLC airport this afternoon as USA-XX was disgorged from the Antonov.
Photo by Gilles Martin-Raget.


The new yacht's sail number was allocated at the start of construction by
ACC Technical Director Ken McAlpine, but has yet to be disclosed by
the team.


Shore team member Scotty Sanford (NZL) successfully shepherded
USA-XX from VLC airport to our Team Base. Not an easy task, but
tonight en route he was still smiling (and dialing) despite detours
and other unforseen obstacles.


Rodney "Electron" Ernst watches as XX is backed for the first time
into its new crib at the Team Base, with the Travel Lift in position
to raise the yacht off the truck's flatbed trailer.

Congrats to Ray Roberts and his crew on the DK46 Ulumulu Quantum Racing who have added another trophy to the cabinet, taking out the Royal Langkawi International Regatta which finished in Malaysia last night.

By winning the first four of the six race series and placing third and second in the final two windward/leeward races, the Sydney crew sailing the chartered DK46 Drumstick (renamed for this event) dominated the IRC Racing class.

In winning the Prime Minister’s Challenge Trophy, the crew also carted off the major prize -- an all expense paid trip for the entire crew to meet the BMW Oracle Racing Team in Valencia and view some America’s Cup Act racing, courtesy of BMW Malaysia.

"We had an excellent regatta, both on and off the water. We are always very well looked after on the Asian circuit, as we were here. I would love to see more Australians come and compete here," Mr Roberts said late last night.

"We are celebrating tonight – the guys are letting their hair down a bit," the Sydney businessman said. Steve McConaghy, Ulumulu Quantum Racing’s tactician added, "It’s great to get another win on the board. We’ve been putting in the hard yards and it has paid off for us.

"We can relax tonight and enjoy the hospitality of the event – they’ve put on a really good show for the competitors here – I can’t say enough about this event. We are all really looking forward to our trip to Valencia, but we have to get some other races of our own out of the way first."


Ray Roberts (AUS) and his RLIR winning team will be heading to VLC as
the guests of BMWOR, courtesy of BMW Malaysia.

Check the Challenger Commission blog for a couple posts over the weekend that may be of interest to team members and their partners, including the GOBO meeting scheduled for Wednesday this week and the Act 10 Notice of Race which has now been issued by the Regatta Director.


Link me all over.