Sponsor close for America's Cup bid

By TERRY MADDAFORD

Confirmation of Team New Zealand's challenge for America's Cup in 2007 appears to be a step closer with speculation they are about to announce a naming rights sponsor.

Reporting from a meeting of 18 prospective teams in Valencia, the Daily Telegraph's Tim Jeffery said all signs are that Team New Zealand are close to their £55 million ($152 million) budget, with a Middle East airline tipped as title sponsor.

Jeffery, in pointing out Team New Zealand had been represented at the meeting by technical chief Andy Claughton rather than team boss Grant Dalton, suggested Dalton was "keeping his powder dry".

Given the representation at the meeting at the host port this week, it appears there could be between eight and 12 challengers for the cup.

Three challenging syndicates, from South-East Asia, Germany/Poland and the United States, choosing to protect their anonymity, were missing, as was the recently-announced South African challengers.

The challengers met the cup-holding Alinghi team, Swiss organisers, the Spanish hosts and other interested parties.

In closing the three-day workshop of meetings, Michael Bonnefous, the chief executive of AC Management, organisers of the 32nd America's Cup, said racing would start on September 5 this year.

"It is exciting that we are now five months away from the Marseille Louis Vuitton Act 1 of the cup," Bonnefous said. "It is tremendous to think there will be racing in such a short time."

Jose Salinas, chief executive of Valencia 2007, said team bases would be ready for occupation from the next northern spring.

In what will be a cost-saving measure for all syndicates, regatta director Dyer Jones gave details of the Meteorological Data System, a shared weather data system which will make the area of the Mediterranean Sea the most analysed "microclimate" in the world.

"The MDS programme is a tremendous step forward for the teams and will result in significant cost savings," Jones said.

"In the past, many teams have spent £1.5 million to obtain essentially the same data.

"We will soon begin the process of gathering and then distributing to the participants meteorological data so that over the coming months and years each team will have a huge amount of analytical data from which to make decisions regarding the designs of their boats and the conditions under which they will be sailing."

Team New Zealand officials could not be contacted last night regarding the likely sponsorship deal.