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Illbruck pulls out of America's Cup

Illbruck is the overall Volvo Ocean Race leader

AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- The leader of the Volvo Ocean Race, Illbruck, has given up plans to become the first German boat in history to compete in America's Cup.

Intensive efforts to find $5 million (€5.7 million) from commercial partners for the 2003 Cup have failed, causing syndicate chief Michael Illbruck to cancel his campaign.

The Illbruck America's Cup Challenge was to be the culmination of a campaign starting in 1994 that included an entry in the current Volvo Ocean Race.

Illbruck said the decision would not affect his boat's continued participation in the Volvo Ocean Race, which is scheduled to conclude in Kiel, Germany in early June.

At the outset Illbruck said he was working on a long-term approach to the America's Cup and was planning to make a full entry for the 2006 Cup series.

Encouraged by the success of the team in the preparations for the Volvo and to maintain the impetus they had created, he decided to push forward with a "toe-in-the-water" single boat challenge for the current 2003 America's Cup series with a modest $20 million budget.

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However, after visiting his Volvo team in New Zealand in January during the third leg stopover, he found the level of the competing America's Cup teams and the potential escalation of costs too daunting.

When he unveiled the hull of his America's Cup yacht, GER 68, in Bremen, Germany, later in February he announced he was looking for additional support for the campaign by the beginning of April.

Compounding the funding woes that forced Illbruck Challenge to withdraw from the America's Cup, backers of the syndicate also forfeit $650,000 (€742,679).

The syndicate had paid the required $150,000 to enter the America's Cup regatta and lodged two performance bonds of $250,000 by the January deadline, which guaranteed its participation. The bonds are non-refundable.

Illbruck, skippered by American John Kostecki, is overall Volvo Ocean Race leader with four of the nine legs completed.

Kostecki, an Olympic silver medallist and two-time America's Cup tactician will clearly be disappointed not to skipper his first Cup campaign.

It is not known whether stopping the current America's Cup campaign will also affect plans for participation in the 2006 Cup.

The team already has a base prepared in Viaduct Harbour in Auckland.

As the Viaduct Harbour was full the French Areva America's Cup team had no base, it now looks likely that they will take over the German base.

Bruno Troublé, spokesman for Louis Vuitton, which runs the qualifying competition for the America's Cup, said: "It is with great sadness that we heard the news of Illbruck's withdrawal from the Cup as we were excited to be welcoming Germany to the Cup family for the first time in the event's history.

"However we wish them all the very best for the rest of the Volvo Ocean Race and hope that in the future we might see a German entry in the Louis Vuitton Cup."