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Home / Sport / Sailing / America's Cup

<i>Peter Lester:</i> Why the Prada crew should all take a bow

29 Nov, 2002 11:04 AM3 mins to read

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Prada's skipper, Francesco de Angelis, was asked this week how his boat's bow was. He said: "Still attached."

That's no mean feat. The Italian challengers have put a third bow on their race boat, ITA-74, and they've also put a new bow and made other major changes to their second boat,
ITA-80.

So why did Prada make such dramatic changes to Luna Rossa just weeks into a five-month regatta that they had spent years preparing for?

In Round Robin One Prada looked a bit uncompetitive across their whole package.

Some of it was their sail programme - the development of sails and rigs.

The obvious change has been what they've done to the bow of their boat. Their race boat has had two complete bow changes, which has meant the crew working round the clock, night and day, between rounds to get the boat seaworthy in time for racing.

So, does one single change, or one single component, make the whole package go faster? If they had left the original bow on the boat and made all the other changes, the genoa changes, the rig changes, they probably would have gone faster anyway.

But coupled with that, it seems that the double knuckle bows - a la Team New Zealand - are probably faster, so why wouldn't you have one?

The big tick for Prada is that they've made incredible changes with so little time between the rounds because of the weather delays.

They've had to come up with the new ideas, and then have the resources, planning and organisation to make the changes. It's the biggest improvement of any challenge since the start of racing.

What they've achieved with altering their boats is testament to a very strong syndicate that could still embarrass the so-called favourites.

I'd be giving a lot of credit to people who have a big association with New Zealand. These are Rod Davis and Laurent Esquier, a Frenchman now at his 10th America's Cup.

Arguably, Laurent is the man who turned New Zealand sailing into the professional game that it is today. You go right back to Fremantle, and New Zealand's first challenge, and it was Sir Michael Fay who hired Laurent to sort out New Zealand yachting.

He was the coach/technical adviser of the sailing team in 1986, and he was the guy that said, "Hey, you're a bunch of fabulously talented sailors but you're undisciplined."

He put in the discipline, and you look at the proteges of Laurent from that era - Chris Dickson, Brad Butterworth and Jeremy Scantlebury, and at Team New Zealand, Erle Williams, Mike Quilter and Tony Rae.

Then it carried on in 88, and the Big Boat challenge. Now he's doing it with Prada.

Are we surprised with what Prada's achieved? No, not if you know Laurent.

And a big rap has to go to Rod as well. He worked with Laurent in 1988 and 2000, but against him in 1992 when Rod was with the New Zealand Challenge and Laurent was with Paul Cayard and Il Moro di Venezia.

In my opinion Laurent helped to orchestrate the whole sequence of events over the bowsprit, to help derail New Zealand.

Other syndicates may well have parts of the equation of organisation, ideas and resources, but not all the parts.

Time is the limiter on how much you can do. So it's where you start, how you prioritise and how much capacity - ideas and resources - to move the whole organisation on. Prada have shown a huge capacity to do it.

nzherald.co.nz/americascup

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