Team boss Michael Scheeren, skipper Jesper Bank and technical director Eberhard Magg are holding talks with all the sailors and other members of Team Germany. The contract negotiations took place behind closed doors on Thursday. Whether all the sailors accepted the offers remained unclear at first.
The German team starts optimistically into the ninth pre-regatta of the America's Cup
for the America's Cup. Five spectacular fleet races are scheduled off Trapani until Sunday
programme, in which all twelve Cup yachts will start at the same time.
start at the same time.
After management quarrels and poor performances in the recently concluded eighth pre-regatta in the same area, skipper Jesper Bank (Denmark) and his team are sailing into the final series of the season, which starts on Friday, with renewed confidence. The 48-year-old double Olympic champion said: "We want to have fun again. And I guarantee that we will do better in Act 9 than in Act 8."
The final Act off Sicily is also about the season championship. While the America's Cup defenders from Team Alinghi (59 points) have pulled away almost unassailably from their trio of pursuers - Emirates Team New Zealand (51 points), Luna Rossa (50 points) and BMW Oracle Racing (50 points) - at the top of the ACC Championship before Act 9, there is only a theoretical chance for Team Germany to improve or worsen their position at the end of the year. With 17 points, Bank and his crew are 9 points behind the Italian +39 Challenge and 7 points ahead of the upcoming South African Shosholoza. Under the "high scoring" system, the winner of a pre-regatta receives 12 points, the second 11 and so on.
