Big guns take aim at the bottom

By JULIE ASH

There were no surprises when Alinghi and Victory Challenge revealed their quarter-final opponents yesterday.

Alinghi chose Prada, leaving an all-American clash between Oracle BMW Racing and OneWorld.

In the bottom four, Victory Challenge opted for Le Defi Areva, leaving GBR Challenge to face Team Dennis Conner.

Finishing at the top of the table after the two rounds ahead of Oracle BMW Racing, OneWorld and Prada, Alinghi had the right to pick their opponents for the quarter-finals, as did Victory Challenge who finished fifth ahead of GBR Challenge, Team Dennis Conner and Le Defi Areva.

The Louis Vuitton quarter-finals will be held between November 12 and November 19, and are the best of seven races.

The winners in the top four will advance to the semifinals.

The losers in the top four will meet the winners from the bottom four. The losers in the bottom four are eliminated.

In the round-robin competition Alinghi won one and lost one against Oracle and One World.

Alinghi have raced Prada only once after deciding to forfeit their second-round match on Sunday. Alinghi won that encounter by 1m 32s.

But since then, Prada have remodelled ITA74, and their second yacht ITA80 has just returned from the boatyard where it has undergone extensive modifications.

Teams have until 24 hours before the start of the quarter-finals to announce which boat they will use.

Alinghi bowman Bernard Labro said Prada would be a strong opponent.

"The Italians have never stopped sailing since the last cup, and they have been improving their technical skills the whole time.

"They have developed good crew manoeuvring and great boat handling."

Alinghi design team co-ordinator Grant Simms believes Prada have made the biggest improvements since the start of the competition.

"We will wait with interest to see which boat they will choose.

"Our objective is to continue our own improvements and developing programme."

It is possibly Prada's signs of improvement that encouraged Alinghi to choose them with the hope of beating them and sending them back through the repechage.

Prada skipper Francesco de Angelis said Alinghi's choice was not a surprise.

"The mere fact of being in the first four guaranteed that we would face a strong opponent.

"Alinghi chose us; sooner or later we would have had the opportunity to face them," he said.

"Now we have an important week of work ahead of us with the modified ITA 80.

"During this week we will have to make our choice of the boat to use against Alinghi and run a series of tests that are also important for the near future.

"It is a difficult match, but it will also be for us an important verification of where we are in our programme."

OneWorld Challenge executive director Bob Ratliffe also said Alinghi's decision was no surprise.

"It was what we expected," Ratliffe said. "We feel confident and are ready."

Victory Challenge had made their decision on Sunday after their race against Oracle, but met yesterday morning to thrash out a few more issues.

Victory Challenge helmsman Jesper Bank said the decision came down to the British or the French.

"We don't know enough about Team Dennis Conner, they are harder to predict than the other two," he said.

"When you weigh the teams up against each other, it appears there was only one way of choosing and that was who was last on the scoreboard."

Many yachting experts have been quick to criticise the crew work of the French, but Bank said it was not really something his team took into consideration.

"We thought that on the handling side Team Dennis Conner were the worst in making mistakes from what you would expect from those calibre of people."

Le Defi Areva skipper Luc Pillot said his team were not sure who the Swedes would chose.

"I suspect they hesitated, because we have certainly been improving and we have got to know their style," Pillot said.

"At the moment, I think they are pulling the maximum from both their boats.

"And even though they beat us in the round-robins, the first leg of each match was close.

"We just have to get round the first mark ahead of them, and I think they'll have a little more trouble.

"We still have plenty of scope for development and we'll be maximising that over the next few days," he said.

"We are capable of beating the Swedes."

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