by the Sports Editor
The regattas that will decide who will challenge New Zealand will only be held starting from August 2024. Meanwhile, this year there will be the Preliminaries
Skipper Sirena jokingly (but not too much) says that to beat New Zealand it would take cyclists like Pippo Ganna. What is certain is that you need to prepare in time and therefore the first Luna Rossa in the AC40 version has already arrived on the Barcelona regatta field, even if a boat that has little or nothing to do with the AC75s that will compete in 2024.
The AC40 will be the boat in which the famous Preliminary regattas (two, by Protocol obligation, written by defender and challenger of record, Team New Zealand and Ineos Britannia) will be held in 2023, to be held in 2023, a year before the real Cup . One of the two elective seats was supposed to be Cagliari, then there was the renunciation. Result: the first Preliminary will be held in Catalonia, in the town of Vilanova, 35 km south of Barcelona from 14 to 17 September. The second, from November 30 to December 3, in Jeddah, in the Red Sea.
The preliminary regattas last four days and, as mentioned, do not see the same boats of the America’s Cup at sea (the AC75 hulls almost twice as long), but are held with the AC40 hulls, one design (all the same) that each team has compulsorily bought by New Zealanders. Yes, the teams are the same as in the Cup, even if it is not said that the starting teams will run in the preliminaries, indeed the use of the reserves is very probable. In a word: preliminary regattas are a product that America’s Cup Event (ACE, the operating arm of the defender/keeper Team New Zealand) is committed to “selling” to interested locations, and which is obliged to organize by the Protocol (the legal document establishing the rules of the 37th edition of the America’s Cup, without however violating the foundations of the trophy sanctioned in the Deed of Gift of the late nineteenth century). These events have two motivations: 1) to create the occasion for a direct confrontation between the crews who are preparing for the real challenges in Barcelona in autumn 2024, and 2) to ensure visibility for the sponsors even outside the real Cup and own. The products are in fact sold to the best bidder localities, as are the related television rights.
June 27, 2023 (change June 27, 2023 | 20:42)
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