Yacht Racing Life is a reader-supported publication. If you enjoy our free content please consider signing up to receive our free email newsletter, or help the development of the website by becoming a paid subscriber.
Questions, questions. With Sardinia playing host to the first Preliminary Regatta of the Louis Vuitton 38th America’s Cup cycle, for die-hard fans those questions will become answers as we analyse just what to look out for in the AC40 team makeups of Emirates Team New Zealand, GB1, Luna Rossa, Tudor Team Alinghi and K-Challenge.
Cagliari will be fascinating.
Emirates Team New Zealand have been training hard down in Auckland in the Southern Hemisphere summer months and will arrive in Europe with a target on their backs. Everyone wants to beat the Kiwis as the current Defenders, but they are playing their cards close to their chests at the moment.
Who will partner Nathan Outteridge on helming duties is the biggest question of all, and one that Chief Operating Officer Kevin Shoebridge was non-committal about in Naples recently.
Do the Kiwis opt for the talent of Chris Draper from the UK or do they select from their ‘Class of ‘26’ team in Jake Pye, Seb Menzies or Josh Armit or perhaps they go with the proven talent of Jo Aleh, a Gold and Silver medallist at the Olympics? Equally so, what of the trim and flight control roles now that Iain Jensen has joined the team?
Andy Maloney, Blair Tuke and the aforementioned Draper could all slot into a trim role, so the call is going to be mighty interesting with ramifications to the AC75 – perhaps!
Luna Rossa has a similar conundrum in the helming stakes with Peter Burling, the three-time Cup winner certain to start from the starboard pod but whether the double Olympic Gold medallist Ruggero ‘Rugi’ Tita or three-time Optimist World Champion Marco Gradoni gets the nod, is anyone’s guess in the port helm slot. Fascinating.
The Challenger of Record, GB1, made no secret in Naples that they were building the team around Dylan Fletcher but it’s all eyes on who partners him. Sir Ben Ainslie led the team on the water in 2024 from the starboard helm position, scoring Great Britain’s finest result in 90 years, and could easily step in to the regatta in Sardinia, but that’s not a given.
Hannah Mills OBE could well be an inspired choice, and enjoys a brilliant communications loop with Fletcher, or do the British go for youth and build from there? Big questions to be answered.
France’s K-Challenge meanwhile has an abundance of riches currently in the team with Quentin Delapierre the designated skipper, leading this mercurial continuation team.
Enzo Balanger, the skipper of France’s Youth America’s Cup team in 2024 is the obvious choice to partner Delapierre, although whispers in Naples suggest that a new sailor could be joining in the near future to make the French helming positions some of the most coveted and pressurised over the coming months.
The dark horses are Tudor Team Alinghi with only Nicolas Rolaz confirmed as a team member at the time of writing. Nico was known as the ‘Swiss Army Knife’ in Barcelona because he could do everything on the boat and, as a past Optimist World Champion, is itching to prove himself in the lead up to Naples in 2027. Expect a flurry of announcements around the Swiss team in the coming weeks.
Sardinia, and the port of Cagliari, will be a first sighter of the form for the Louis Vuitton 38th America’s Cup. Pundits are saying that it will be a shoot-out between the Kiwis and the Italians who have been the most obvious operationally in recent months, but there is so much talent around the Cup world that you can expect surprises – and those could well come from the Youth & Women second boats that all the teams are expected to field.
The young guns, keen to prove themselves on the biggest stage of all, will be eyeing scalps and pushing hard.
