There are still five days to go until the first start of the Louis Vuitton Cup. There are a lot of thoughts running through your head. From 1 October, it's all about making the most of a year and a half of preparation. Our Le Defi Areva team is one of the outsiders in the challenger series.
outsiders in the challenger series.
The English bookmaker William Hill, usually good at predictions, would pay 101 euros for one if we were to win the Louis Vuitton Cup. According to the betting community, we will finish second last of the nine challengers. Not a rosy outlook, but no reason to despair either. It's true: we operate with the smallest budget of all the teams: 24 million euros. Not exactly a lot compared to Prada's 95 million. But money alone is not the decisive factor. The important factor is time. Time for thorough, well-structured and tightly organised preparation. In this respect, I envy Jochen Schümann his opportunities with the top favourite Alinghi.
The Swiss Dream Team had everything you dream of as a profit maker. The budget was secured extremely early on and the best people in the world were quickly signed up. The boss, Ernesto Bertarelli, seems to be a real team player. Alinghi's preparation under the leadership of Cup triumphant Russell Coutts seems to have gone perfectly. So well, in fact, that the team is giving its entire squad three days off next weekend. That speaks for itself and almost borders on an attempt to demoralise the opposition.
In this 31st edition of the Cup and the long preliminary round from October to February 2003, we are dealing with a new constellation. Not one syndicate - like Prada in the last edition - but four projects have invested so much money that they should actually win the Louis Vuitton Cup. In addition to Alinghi, Prada, Oracle BMW Racing and OneWorld have all invested almost 100 million euros.
Not everyone will be able to win. Bruno Troublé, initiator and organiser of the races for the Louis Vuitton Cup, put it nicely today at a VIP lunch in the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron: "All the campaigns here have very interesting men as leaders. And they all want to win. They are used to winning as businessmen. It will be exciting to see how they deal with their victories. But perhaps even more exciting is how they will deal with defeats, because in the end there can only be one winner and therefore one challenger."
It would be unrealistic to say that we see ourselves in the final. Of course we want to get as far as possible. We work hard for that. Seven days a week. Twelve to 16 hours a day. The Shore crew sometimes around the clock. We will have to make up for our financial and time deficits compared to the other syndicates with extreme dedication and perhaps one or two smart solutions.
I'm very amused by the extent to which the well-known Cup hide-and-seek game is blossoming here. Just the comparison between our base and those of the rich "club of four" is impressive. We have a small gate in front of the entrance. With a chain and a padlock, the number of which everyone knows anyway. Incidentally, it dates back to the time of our previous tenants, theillbruck Challenge, which actually wanted to work here as a cup syndicate: No. 4014, the sail number of the most victorious of all former Pintas. We are an open project. The only one apart from Dennis Conner's Stars and Stripes team and the second Italian team, Mascalzone Latino, that doesn't give its boats a skirt to cover the keel and rudder when they are craned out of the water. This also has to do with self-confidence, because the game of hide-and-seek makes little sense in my view. After all, you can't just copy your opponent a few weeks before the Cup and rebuild your own yacht. The configurations of a Cup yacht are far too complicated for that.
And every expert can see the important things anyway, despite the skirt: The British have obviously fitted one of their boats with a tandem keel. This can be recognised by the extremely forward position of the mast and also by the way the boat was sailed on the water during training. A bit shaky and not 100 per cent controlled. Dennis Conner is causing a furore with the narrowest boat in the fleet. It is even narrower than the Oracle BMW Racing yachts, which are already very slim.
We ourselves tend to be one of the somewhat fuller models with a bow of our own volition. Understandably, I can only explain why we have opted for this variant at a later date... What is clear is that at this point in time - five days before the first starting shot - nobody can say for sure which configuration is the best. Also because the sails, crew and a few other parameters also play a major role in the interaction.
Like most other projects, we will be relying on a sailing team of more than the necessary 16 men. We have 24 men. Some positions are filled twice, some even three times. I share my position as pit man with my colleague Jean-Francois Rivalant. So it could easily happen that on the first day of the regatta in the Louis Vuitton Cup, no German will be sailing at all, because Jochen Schümann, who is responsible for the team line-up in his team, will also not be racing every day. The daily composition of the team depends on various factors: The opponent plays a role, the weather and, of course, the physical and mental condition of the individual sailors. Sporting Director Pierre Mas and the two coaches decide on the new line-up.
We are all fit. Our team has been on site for five weeks. We were the last to arrive, having trained extensively beforehand at our French base in Lorient. Here in Auckland, our days start at 6.15 a.m. with the beeping of the alarm clock. At 6.35 I'm on my bike and cycle from the house where I live with my family down the hill from the Ponsonby neighbourhood to Halsey Street, where all the syndicates have set up their base camps in a row. The working day starts there at 6.45am with an hour of sport. We then have breakfast together and either go sailing or look after the boats if the weather doesn't allow us to be out on the water. When we get off the water, the work on the boats continues. After all, there's always something to improve and things often break. On good days, you're at home between 7 and 8 pm, on normal days between 9 and 11 pm. This is not unusual for Cup campaigns shortly before the start of the series and is part of the job.
On Saturday - three days before the start - there will be a big parade of all the teams in Auckland. Around 200,000 fans are expected on the streets - certainly an impressive backdrop. On Monday, the draw will take place, which we are all eagerly awaiting to find out who will play when and against whom in the first two Round Robin rounds. From a purely psychological point of view, I would like to see the supposedly strongest teams as opponents in the opening round. Firstly, because they might be more prone to making mistakes at an early stage and secondly, because a possible defeat against Goliath doesn't mean any drama for David. Jochen Schümann put it in similar terms. He would also prefer to face one of the other co-favourites in the Alinghi Challenge. After all, a possible defeat against a "little one" would certainly be harder to take psychologically. However, Alinghi has not lost a single match in the training duels that have taken place so far - a fact that has long been common knowledge. Neither against Prada nor against Oracle. I'm not allowed to say much about our results against our sparring partners here, but we have definitely realised that we are very fast in certain conditions. A good motivational boost for our team.
Anyone interested in the America's Cup should definitely take a look at the TV programme guides this time. Eurosport is broadcasting a lot and in better quality than last time. And NDR is broadcasting a 45-minute special in mid-October. Things are happening in terms of sailing and television in Germany and we German sailors are very happy about that, because it definitely speaks in favour of a growing interest in our sport.
