Photos: Best of the America's CupKEY POINTS:
VALENCIA - The America's Cup has become a yachting contest of metres, Alinghi design group co-ordinator Grant Simmer says.
The Swiss defenders have the upperhand over challengers Team NZ, needing just one more win to retain the trophy, but appear to have achieved that without the speed edge many commentators thought their boat would have.
Before the cup match began, reported comments by Alinghi skipper Brad Butterworth that SUI100 was probably half a generation ahead of NZL92 added fuel to that belief.
However, the two yachts have appeared to be evenly matched over a range of conditions off Valencia.
Simmer said every syndicate hoped to have a boat speed advantage, but Alinghi had never believed that would be the decisive factor.
"We're quite happy with the performance of SUI100," he said.
"But we weren't brash enough to think that boat speed would ever win this event."
Simmer said all teams had been learning off each other during the buildup regattas over the past three years, when Alinghi sailed against the 11 challengers.
That meant the cup match was always going to be tight, even if the boats had points of departure in their hull shape, rig and appendages.
"This is now a contest of metres -- metres to get you in a position where you can get a strong lee-bow, or metres where you can just get across the other boat," he said.
"It's so close now, where every couple of metres you can gain up the race course is going to be significant."
Simmer now finds himself in the reverse situation than he was in 1983, when he was part of the most memorable showdown in the America's Cup's now 156-year history.
He was navigator on Australia 2, which was 1-3 down in what was then a best-of-seven series and needed to win all three races remaining to beat American defender Liberty.
The Australians did just that, their improbable feat ending the New York Yacht Club's 132-year hold on the cup.
Alinghi, up 4-2, are now trying to ensure they are not the victims of a similar comeback by Team NZ.
After race six last weekend, NZL92 mastman Matthew Mason recalled the events at Rhode Island 24 years ago, saying they would provide inspiration to the New Zealand camp.
Simmer said the circumstances were different back then in that Australia 2 and Liberty were dissimilar in design.
They ended up being reconfigured during the match and by the decisive final race did become closer in performance.
"The performance profile of these boats are very similar throughout the whole range," he said of SUI100 and NZL92.
"We've seen enough different conditions now and in none of those conditions have we seen a significant difference between the boats."
Simmer recalled that the approach Australia 2 skipper John Bertrand and his crew took in their successful comeback was simply to concentrate on the race at hand.
"We had had a couple of breakdowns, a few things go against us," he said.
"We always thought we were better than that so we kept saying we were going to focus on one day. We never looked at the points. We just said we had to focus on one day and it worked for us."
- NZPA
