GENEVA - The Swiss challenge for the 2003 America's Cup, baptised Alinghi, has received backing from sponsors including UBS, Switzerland's largest bank.
The team, skippered by Russell Coutts and financed by Swiss biotech executive Ernesto Bertarelli, revealed the boat's name and its red and grey colours at the Societe Nautique de
Geneve, its home port.
The craft, formerly a catamaran registered as Be Happy by Swiss Marc Pajot in his America's Cup bid, has been overhauled.
It is being used for practice while two Alinghis are being constructed at a Swiss shipyard for sailing's prestige event.
"Alinghi is an imaginary name which has brought me luck," said Bertarelli, a yachtsman who won the largest regatta on Lake Geneva, the Bol d'Or, in 1997 and last year.
The Swiss challenge said that UBS, among the world's largest banks, and the California-based Infonet Services Corp, were its main sponsors.
Swiss watchmaker Audemars Piguet is another sponsor.
Bertarelli, a 35-year-old billionaire and chief executive of the Geneva-based Serono, the world's leading biotechnology company, says he is underwriting a 75 million Swiss franc ($101.87 million) budget.
The team of 85 will train in the Mediterranean off France's southern eastern coast at Sete.
- REUTERS
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