Yachting: Gods smiling on unbeaten Nippon

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

Idaten, the Indian God who ran from the devil with Buddha's ashes, will have its speed put to the test again today on the Hauraki Gulf.

Nippon's new boat, nicknamed Idaten, is the only unbeaten yacht midway through the final qualifying round of the Louis Vuitton Cup challenger series for the America's Cup, catapaulting the Japanese from a struggling syndicate to frontrunners.

Today, Idaten should discover how fast it really is when it comes up against the yardstick of this regatta, Prada, of Italy.

The Italians' new Luna Rossa, also introduced in this round, suffered its first defeat yesterday, in a cliffhanger encounter with AmericaOne that left both boats bruised.

Nippon, like Prada and AmericaOne, should be certain semfinalists come January 2. But Idaten skipper Peter Gilmour wants to use today's clash to prove to his team that they have come a long way.

"It's quite good for the team to have struggled as far as we have in the previous rounds. We learned a lot from that and we were able to translate that into better sailing," he said.

Prada, who make front-page news in Italian papers every day, have lost only two races in the entire regatta. Yesterday, however, boat-speed meant little as they lost to the cunning of AmericaOne.

As the boats writhed around in the pre-start, Prada got too close to AmericaOne, the Italians' bow riding up on to the American boat's stern.

There was plenty of evidence - a hungry shark's bite out of Luna Rossa's bow, the morsel sitting on the back of AmericaOne.

AmericaOne tactician John Kostecki flung his red-and-yellow striped protest flag into the air with one hand, pointing furiously at the evidence with the other.

The umpires following saw it the same way as Kostecki and penalised Prada.

AmericaOne got the better of the start, but Prada headed to the favoured right-hand side of the course and eked out an 18s lead at the top mark.

Francesco de Angelis may have had the lead, but Paul Cayard had the upper hand.

All he had to do was ghost Luna Rossa around the course, play it safe and make sure the difference between the two boats was never more than 40s - the time it would take for Prada to do a penalty turn.

Luna Rossa would sneak ahead a little upwind, AmericaOne would peg it back going down.

With the finish-line in sight, Cayard kept closing in, until there was little more than two boat-lengths in it. As Luna Rossa dropped its gennaker on the line entering the 270-degree turn, AmericaOne sailed by.

The Spanish chances of surviving the cut took a blow even before they crossed the start-line in their clash with Nippon.

Gilmour herded them away from the line a minute before the starter's gun, and Bravo Espana floundered around, starting half a minute after Idaten.

They made gains downwind, but could not peg back a 1m 19s deficit at the end.

Spain are grimly holding on to sixth, two points ahead of Young America, whose race against Stars & Stripes has been held over until tomorrow while Dennis Conner's crew fix their broken boat.

Abracadabra have never found the magic they hoped for, and are virtually out of contention after losing to America True.