Valencia is getting ready for the racing in the America’s Cup Match between Alinghi and the Emirates Team New Zealand
Racing in the America’s Cup Match, between the Defender, Alinghi, and the winner of the Louis Vuitton Cup, Emirates Team New Zealand, begins next Saturday on 23 June. The America’s Cup Match is a ‘first to five’ series. The first team to win five matches will claim the America’s Cup. Port America’s Cup in Valencia received last Sunday visitor number 5 million (this includes all visitors to the AC Park in Valencia in 2004 along with any visitor to Port America’s Cup since June 2005). Everybody is travelling to Valencia to enjoy the America’s Cup, are you going to miss it? Rent an apartment in Valencia and enjoy the sailing competition.
The average number of visitors to Port America’s Cup has been increasing steadily. During race days in 2004 and 2005, the average daily visitor count was around 17 000. This doubled in April of this year during Valencia Louis Vuitton Act 13 to 35 000. The record number of visitors in one day was recorded on May 1 of this year at just over 68 000 people.
Beating Luna Rossa 5-0 for the Louis Vuitton Cup has given Emirates Team New Zealand extra time that the Kiwis hadn’t been expecting in the final countdown to the America’s Cup Match. After taking some much-needed rest, the challenger has decided to spent the next few days conducting speed tests between the race boat NZL 92 and back-up boat NZL 84.
Grant Dalton says: “The team has just come out of a three day break and the feeling is that it would be quite easy to try and maintain the performance of the team at its top level between winning the Louis Vuitton and the Cup itself. But that’s probably completely unrealistic. Although physically the guys aren’t that tired at all, mentally for sure they are. So the guys need to come down to go back up.”
“The programme over the next 12 days is that the time has allowed us – because of winning 5-0, which was as much as a surprise to us as to Luna Rossa and everyone else – to go into testing phase. We’re under no illusions of the pace of Alinghi from a straight boatspeed point of view, and the depth of their technology, and the skill of their yachtsmen. So they’re a pretty formidable package, and if we can extract some more out of NZL 92, we have a window, and we’d like to take full advantage of that.”
“In some ways we’re just checking in on some of the things we did in Auckland. And because we stayed in Auckland as long as we did, and with the help of private individuals flying the boats up here, it allowed us not to get into the situation that maybe Luna Rossa found themselves in after the Semi Finals where they were still looking at configurations for the first time and evaluating them.”
“We’re just re-evaluating things that we think we already know, but in the conditions of Valencia, with a lot more spectator chop at the top mark, and the wind is quite sheary here. It was a good sea breeze today [Monday], but we’ve seen some quite light sea breezes. So we’re just rechecking things here from Auckland.”
“When we’ve done that later in the week, then we’ll take some more time off, and then we’ll get into that period of getting ready for Alinghi.”
