Yachting: Alinghi interest focuses on Oracle, Team New Zealand

Alinghi strategist Murray Jones says the new Oracle boat is 'interesting" and Team New Zealand look "fast" as they prepare for this year's opening America's Cup pre-regatta, which starts in Valencia on Thursday.

While the defenders have dominated the pre-regattas to date, Jones says his team are not expecting to win this year's three regattas. "We feel that there are teams here that will be faster than us."

Emirates Team New Zealand and Luna Rossa have indicated they will race their new boats NZL84 and ITA86 in the first regatta, a seven-day match racing regatta.

Oracle, however, have said they will use their old boat USA76 for the first regatta and introduce their new USA87 for the fleet racing regatta, which starts after the match racing regatta. "The interesting boat is the new Oracle boat and what they have done with their appendages," Jones said.

"Their finn and bulb arrangement is in a different place and a different configuration to the other boats so how they perform will be quite interesting."

He said Oracle's bowsprit was of little interest. "It is not a performance item."

Jones said the Alinghi team had watched some of the racing that had gone on between the challengers.

Not too much should be read into the results, he said, because the conditions had been light and shifty.

However, he said from Valencia that Team New Zealand looked "very strong".

"They seem to have had quite easy races. It [NZL84] looks like a good all-round boat ... they look like they have done a good job."

Alinghi's new boat, SUI91, is safely tucked away in their boat shed. Jones said it would be launched later this month but they had not decided whether to race it in any of this year's regattas. "It is unlikely but it depends on how long it takes to shake down. There is quite a lot of testing that has to go on, structural testing, etc, before it is ready to race. We'll just make that decision once we have sailed with it."

He does, however, concede it will be tempting to race it to gauge its performance against the other teams.

One new development which has emerged is the jumper-less rig, as used by Alinghi and Oracle.

A member of Alinghi's rig design team, Jones said his team had been working on the concept, which is viable in the lighter conditions in Valencia, for nine months.

"It is different to Auckland where you had to be ready for anything. In Valencia, once summer comes in properly and you have got sea breezes, you generally wouldn't expect to have above 18 knots."

Alinghi rotated their crew including their helmsmen (Jochen Schuemann, Ed Baird and Peter Holmberg) a lot last year, something Jones said they would do again this year. He would not, however, be drawn on speculation of a possible return of Russell Coutts, who was sacked from the team in 2003.

He said Alinghi had continued to develop SUI75 which "is a different boat from last year".

While the regattas do not count for anything for Alinghi, he said they provided the syndicate with race practice and were a good way of gauging their performance against the other teams.

"This is our time to get in some proper racing. We haven't done that much racing in-house because we have been concentrating on testing."