Alinghi Names Race Crew to Defend the America's Cup
Valencia, 22th June 2007

Alinghi syndicate head, Ernesto Bertarelli, team skipper, Brad Butterworth and design team coordinator, Grant Simmer, faced the media this morning to announce the race crew for the 32nd America’s Cup. The race yacht SUI100 had been announced earlier in the week to race in the Match.

Ernesto welcomed the media and gave a re-cap of the past three years of the 32nd America’s Cup campaign, recounting the successes of the Louis Vuitton Acts and thanking the team for their hard work and the sponsors for their support. "The team has been constant throughout our three year preparation and we are ready for the Challenger and ready for the Match. I would like to thank our sponsors, whose support has been invaluable. An example of this is the supporters’ book that UBS, one of our main partners, has put together. It has notes and pictures wishing Alinghi well from all over Switzerland," he described, before handing the mic over to Brad Butterworth to announce the race crew for the Match.

The team skipper listed the 17 crew members, and added: "We have great depth in our team and are spoiled for choice in every area, for this reason it has been hard to find a final 17 crew to race the Match. We are very fortunate to have such a high level of ability as it means we can operate as a squad and rotate crew if we have to." He went on to insist that the whole crew is on stand-by to rotate in during the Match.   The yacht these 17 sailors will race is to be SUI100, as announced on Wednesday.

Grant Simmer described the evolution of the last America’s Cup Class yacht built for this 32nd America’s Cup campaign: "On Saturday, SUI100 will start her first official race. This yacht is the result of five years of development by the Alinghi design and sailing team and the product of seven months hard work by our shore crew, first with the build, then the maintenance and the constant refinement. Needless to say we are very proud of her."   The first race of the 32nd America’s Cup Match by Louis Vuitton begins at 15:00 on Saturday 23 June.

The race crew line up is as follows: