America's Cup - Skippers Look Ahead To The Valencia Louis Vuitton Acts

Valencia, Spain, 4th October - The America’s Cup comes to its new home of Valencia, Spain for the first time this week with the Valencia Louis Vuitton Acts 2 and 3. Act 2, beginning on Tuesday, is a Match Racing series, pitting the eight teams against each other in a double round-robin series. The Louis Vuitton Act 3 closes out the racing calendar for 2004 with a Fleet Racing regatta from the 14th to 17th of October.

The racing in Valencia will be seen locally in Spain on TVE and TVE 2, the Spanish national broadcaster. TVE secured the rights to broadcast the entire 32nd America’s Cup last week, and is committed to airing over 300 hours of programming over the next three years, beginning with a resume of highlights from the first three days of Act 2 of the 32nd America’s Cup scheduled to air on Friday, 8th October at 20:30

On Monday morning, the skippers of the eight teams c ompeting in the Valencia Louis Vuitton Acts 2 and 3 met the press, ahead of the first scheduled racing on Tuesday.

Thierry Peponnet, K-Challenge (FRA 57), on the development of his team ahead of the first races:
>From the first Louis Vuitton Act in Marseille, we have tried to develop our philosophy of getting more people involved. So we have two girls on board – Dawn Riley and Meg Gaillard – and three New Zealand guys, with Cameron Appleton as the tactician and strategist…so we are looking forward to improving over the future.

Philippe Presti, LE DEFI, on the struggles of being a ‘prospective challenger’:
We are a prospective challenger, which means we are trying to do our best to show our team and be a part of the show of Act 2 and 3. We haven’t had any training since Marseille, the team arrived this morning at 04:00, so we are a struggling a bit. But we will try and improve over the week as we did in Marseille, and get better and better.

Iain Percy, +39, on entering the America’s Cup environment:
It’s all quite exciting. Most of the people on the boat are very inexperienced (at the America’s Cup), which I found out yesterday when I hooked the Committee Boat on our keel. The team has a certain energy and feel, and everyone’s enjoying themselves and hopefully we’re all learning together. We’re standing at the start of a journey, and we’re looking forward to the next three years.

Francesco de Angelis, Luna Rossa, on his team’s first day match-up against the Defender, Team Alinghi and the 2003 Louis Vuitton Cup finalist, BMW ORACLE Racing:
We know this is a difficult game, so we’re taking the opportunity to start against the good people right away. We’ve been busy so far putting together the new team. That’s taken a lot of energy and effort…now we can begin to focus our energies on the water. We’re glad to be here…for us this is the beginning of the road.

Dean Barker, Emirates Team New Zealand, on his team’s struggles to get to the start line:
For a while it was pretty unlikely that we would be able to compete here. But after a lot of hard work by Grant Dalton and the shore crew in New Zealand to get NZL 81 ready, and then the assistance we got from ACM which allowed us to be here, it’s been all hands on deck to get the boat ready…and it’s great to actually get out on the water and be out sailing. From the sailing team’s perspective it’s just great we’ll be able to race.

Geoff Meek, Team Shosholoza, on settling in at Valencia:
The venue is fantastic. The space that has been made available to the America’s Cup is mind boggling for us from Cape Town. We’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s very exciting for us to be here. The weather is more settled than Marseille was, and I don’t think we’ll have the wind we had there so we’ll do our best and hopefully not be too slow.

Brad Butterworth, Team Alinghi, on sailing in Valencia compared to the Hauraki Gulf in Auckland:
It’s a lot warmer here. It doesn’t rain much here. We don’t get any fruit thrown at us here…so I like it here.

Chris Dickson, BMW ORACLE Racing, measuring up the opposition:
We were pleased with the result in Marseille. It was tough racing, it was very close racing, Alinghi beat us in the match race, and Alinghi is the Defender of the America’s Cup, and Alinghi is the toughest boat always…I’m sure Alinghi will be tough again but Prada we haven’t seen before, and Emirates Team New Zealand is sailing another boat, +39 hasn’t raced us before, so it’ll be an interesting week.

Earlier, the Race Committee released the pairing list for Tuesday’s races. The first start is scheduled for 12:40.

Tuesday 5th October

Flight 1 Port (Blue) Starboard (Yellow)
Match 1 ITA 74 USA 71
Match 2 ITA 59 SUI 64
Match 3 FRA 69 FRA 57
Matc h 4 NZL 81 RSA 48

Flight 2
Match 1 FRA 69 RSA 48
Match 2 ITA 74 SUI 64
Match 3 ITA 59 USA 71
Match 4 FRA 57 NZL 81

The public opening ceremony welcoming the America’s Cup community to Valencia is scheduled to begin at 20:00 on Monday evening.