Yachting: Spanish challenge far from classroom

Spaniard Luis Doreste is a university lecturer in the Canary Islands. In his spare time he drives an America's Cup boat.

Doreste is probably the only helmsman in this America's Cup who isn't a professional yachtsman.

Yet he is one of the world's best - a double Olympic gold medallist - from one of Europe's most famous yachting families.

For Doreste, the next 12 months will be the most frantic of his life.

He will make his America's Cup debut behind the wheel of Bravo Espana, Spain's new white boat which arrived in Auckland this week.

He has put his job on hold at the university in the Canary Islands, where he teaches computer studies - his profession for 12 years.

"I have to work and to sail - all my life it has been this way for me," he said. "But I think I spend more time on the water than in the classroom."

Yesterday he headed to Sydney to sail in the pre-Olympics, the final dress rehearsal a year before the Olympic regatta, to contest a three-man Soling.

In December, just before the semifinals of the Louis Vuitton Cup challenger series, Doreste will duck back to Sydney for a two-boat Spanish trial for one Olympic place.

His opponent is his brother Manuel. A tactician on Bravo Espana, Manuel will step into Luis' shoes while he is across the Tasman next week - taking over the wheel of the cup boat next week when she gets her first taste of the Hauraki Gulf.

The four Doreste brothers have always been fierce rivals on the water.

"I have been to four Olympics, but every time I had to beat my brothers to get there," Luis said.

Why don't they sail together? "We are all helmsmen," grins Luis.

But all four siblings have sailed in the Olympics. Luis won gold in 1984 in the 470 class, and again in Barcelona eight years later in the Flying Dutchman.

The oldest brother, Jose Luis, won gold in the Finn dinghy in 1988.

Family is very important to Luis Doreste, whose wife is expecting their second child in February.

"Everything is happening at once for me," he smiles. "But it is all so far from Spain."

Doreste is already finding that the political world of the America's Cup is very different from the more sedate Olympic arena.

"In the Olympics, everyone sails against everyone else for a year up until the racing starts.

"Here, everyone keeps away from everyone else. In the America's Cup, no one wants to sail against another boat until the first race," he says.

But Doreste is already fascinated with the cup and what he has seen unfold in the Spanish challenge's build-up in Valencia.

The Spaniards have been dealt their share of bad luck - crewman Martin Wizner died in an accident on the training boat, and the mast of their new boat snapped 15 minutes after she was christened.

But they believe they have turned the corner and brought a quick new boat to Auckland.

Their second boat, a heavily modified 1995 cup yacht, was deemed too slow to bother bringing halfway around the world.