KEY POINTS:
There is a strange, discordant contrast about the 32nd America's Cup at the moment. It is a world-class, high-quality, maximum-efficiency, compelling international sports event.
But there's hardly anyone here in perhaps the most relentlessly controlled sports event of all time.
It is only hours away from the first
race of the final - and fans in New Zealand are throwing hungrier glances at the Auld Mug, as we do; as we always do when there is the chance of our mighty mouse of a country punching well above its weight again.
And there's the strangest thing. There is possibly more excitement building in Auckland than there is here in Valencia.
Walk around the undeniably attractive America's Cup Port with the syndicates' headquarters and the obligatory parade of private yachts (both the masted kind and the look-at-me, I'm-a-really-wealthy-person kind) and there is only one thought running consistently through your mind: Where are all the people?
The Valencianos are indeed looking forward to Saturday night - but not necessarily because of race one, America's Cup match.
Their primary interest is in the festival of St John and the bonfires.
Something like 200,000 people will converge on Valencia's huge sweeping beach frontage to the Mediterranean on Saturday night.
They'll build bonfires and leap through them, they'll let off fireworks, they'll party pretty hard and they'll get up to various forms of mostly innocent mischief which hark back more to the ancient pagan observance of the summer solstice than anything involving St John.
Many are also expected to partake in the America's Cup beforehand - a sort of aperitif before they get down to the serious, uninhibited business on the beach later.
Happy accident or shrewd planning, the America's Cup has found a clever way to guarantee a decent percentage of the 200,000 being on hand for race one.
But otherwise, the Valencianos are mostly elsewhere when it comes to the cup. Anyone who was at the Viaduct for America's Cups will note the difference the minute they walk into the striking but quiet base.
The Viaduct's proximity to the city meant it hummed. It had a pulse of its own, even if that was at times only the collective accelerating heartbeats of overbeering men ogling passing women.
The Viaduct worked, sitting as it did in the midst of the City of Sails which lived up to its name by giving the area a definite thrum at all hours.
The America's Cup at Valencia also has a thrum, but it emanates from a carefully packaged, neatly manipulated corporate event, a sports event which motors smoothly along to the sound of the corporate minders ticking off the objectives as each is achieved; a giant corporate communications programme.
Most events like this have a public face and a private face. From the public face thus far, fans in New Zealand could be forgiven for thinking the Valencia Cup Port is filled with thronging fans and happy, smiling sailors only too glad to talk to everyone; gentlemen competitors with the ancient principles of sport lashed to their hearts with an impenetrable sailor's knot.
The reality is that sport's good old intense and sometimes bitter competition lurks just below the surface, masked by the uneasy truce between the cup's smooth corporate PR machine and the media.
Truce? It's more like conditions of surrender. The America's Cup Management (ACM) and the teams rule with the proverbial iron fist.
At a media briefing, we heard the ACM media folk outline a new rule - we would all have to ask our questions at the post-event press conference as opposed to getting off-the-cuff, one-on-one interviews with the sailors immediately afterwards. There was no obligation for the teams to stay and talk, we were told.
Hello? Is this sport or General Motors massaging its annual result?
So who will win? The betting remains clouded by the unexposed form and the growing conviction that, while Alinghi may have the faster boat, Team New Zealand have the better crew.
The former may obviously be an advantage; the question is whether the latter can bridge the expected speed gap in Valencia airs which, if they are true to the character at this time of year, may favour Alinghi.
There is an increasing feeling that they can. The mood in Valencia has turned slightly, especially with Alinghi's recent technical challenge to the rules.
Previously, this would have been seen as another effort to wring the last available ounce of speed out of their boat with their efforts regarding their cabling which, even if it had been granted, would have won only a small speed edge.
Now the feeling is that maybe Alinghi have been demanding such changes not from the position of strength we all supposed but from the growing knowledge that they may need everything they can find to subdue Team New Zealand. We'll soon know.
