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MADRID - Alinghi, who were frighteningly fast in their last fleet races in April, do not expect to have any boat speed advantage against Team New Zealand in the America's Cup, their managing director said on Tuesday.
Alinghi take on New Zealand from June 23 in a rematch of the 2003 America's Cup, when the Swiss syndicate won sailing's most coveted prize and brought it to Europe for the first time since the original race in 1851.
Alinghi kept setting the pace in April when one of their new boats SUI91 shot past the America's Cup challengers in a fleet regatta. Team New Zealand came in second but they were still 14 points adrift.
Since then the Kiwis have steadily improved during the Louis Vuitton Cup, honing their boat as the winds and pressure changed over the past two months.
"(Team New Zealand) have done a lot of racing, they've kept their crew very stable -- so I would say they are match fit," Alinghi's Grant Simmer said in an emailed interview.
"Clearly their boat has come a long way ... they are fast and we're not expecting to have a speed edge on them," he added.
During the LV Cup, the Swiss have been practising to one side, racing between their two top-class teams and yachts.
Over the last couple of weeks, they have taken up offers to race LV Cup loser Luna Rossa and semi-finalist Desafio Espanol to put the finishing touches to their sailing skills and pump up the adrenaline for the pre-start battles.
"Despite the fact that we have recently sailed against Luna Rossa, we haven't been exposed to the same intensity of racing and that's a risk that we face," Simmer said, adding that he was happy with their races against the Italian and Spanish crews.
"There was high intensity and our performance looked very encouraging against them".
Alinghi now step up their in-house racing again until Friday when they will announce which boat they will use for the America's Cup match and which of their two main helmsmen, Ed Baird and Peter Holmberg, will sail her.
"There is anticipation and a bit of anxiety but all of that is good," Simmer said. "We wouldn't want to be going into an event being casual about it".
- REUTERS
