Yachting: Kiwis on top in biggest race

Brad Webb goes up BMW Oracle's mast during sea trials at San Diego.

A number of Kiwi sailors will be on the frontline in Valencia this week as warring billionaires Larry Ellison and Ernesto Bertarelli try to resolve their long-running America's Cup feud with a one-on-one showdown on the water.

After a 2-year legal battle, the New York courts ordered the bitter rivals to settle their differences on the water with a rare Deed of Gift Challenge.

Ellison's BMW Oracle will take on defenders Alinghi, the Swiss syndicate owned by Bertarelli, in a best-of-three grudge match beginning tonight (NZ time).

Both men have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into building state-of-the-art multihulls specifically for the event that could all be over in the space of three days.

The two yachts are highly engineered, massive and so fast and powerful, yet at the same time so inherently fragile that crews are said to be apprehensive about racing them.

With the stakes so high, a lot of weight rests on the shoulders of Kiwi yachting legends Brad Butterworth and Russell Coutts and their respective crews aboard Alinghi and BMW Oracle.

New Zealand sailor Brad Webb, Oracle's bowman, admits the team are feeling the heat. He expects the nerves will be in overdrive when their spectacular trimaran sails into the start box tonight.

"In the past, the America's Cup has been best-of-nine and this is best-of-three, so there aren't a lot of chances to get it right," said Webb.

"There's going to be a lot of pressure that we put on ourselves, and we know we have a lot of people behind us who are looking forward to this day, so that's going to be the big thing, the pressure and trying to use that to prepare yourself.

"Everything that you've learned, everything that you've practised, everything that you've thought about coming up to this moment is going to come to a head, and you just have to go out and race."

Webb's teammate and fellow Kiwi Ross Halcrow said the fact that both boats were such vastly unknown quantities added a further element of excitement to the event. The yachts had never been raced before and no one was really sure what these huge craft were capable of.

"That's going to be the beauty of this America's Cup. We have some kind of an idea as to how fast they are, and they have an idea as to how fast we are, but until the start gun goes and we line up for the first time and get going, we're not really going to know.

"It's going to be pretty exciting," said Halcrow, a trimmer aboard USA 17.

Tonight's race will be a windward-leeward course with 20-mile legs, 40 miles in total.