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Big-budgets mean new AC forum

Prada has spent less on the 2002 challenge than in previous years

AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- Big-budget syndicates have changed the forum of the America's Cup, with more imaginative designs and more sailor expertise.

Two years ago the Italian syndicate Prada emerged as the benchmark challenger with its budget, largely provided by fashion mogul Patrizio Bertelli, being the largest among the 11 challengers.

Prada brought a sense of Milanese haute couture, of ample wealth and luxurious living and, in doing so, it provided the last Cup with glamour and definition.

But times have changed and Prada's impressive budget of $55 million has now been superseded by other teams' budgets of $85 million and upwards provided by some of the world's richest men.

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Prada's operations director Laurent Esquier told The Associated Press: "This is not a seasonal sport and this event will be very different from the last. The last page was turned at the end of the last regatta and this is the start of a new book."

The money that has flooded into the Cup has bought time and resources. The new benchmark syndicates, particularly Alinghi of Switzerland and Oracle of the United States, have been able to create much larger development programmes than before.

Although Prada has been eclipsed, to a degree, it remains America's Cup trend setter -- still swanky and elegant from its keels to its designer windbreakers.

And as winners of the challenge series last time, it has started at the highest level challengers can reach. But some of its wealthier competitors have the advantage.

According to Esquier there are two factors that give other syndicates the upper hand: "The first is that Team New Zealand's knowledge or Kiwi expertise in the whole fields of boat design, sails, masts, appendages and good boat handling is now spread around more broadly, particularly among the American and Swiss teams.

"The second factor is that there are now many more teams with the proper funding which has allowed them to hire good people early ... The aces are spread more evenly."

Esquier said the upcoming Cup had to be viewed as an event quite separate from the previous regatta.

"A great deal of progress has been made," Esquier said. "For teams like ourselves it would be a mistake to think this Cup is simply another chapter to add to the last Cup.

"This is a totally new game. At the moment there is a lot of posturing, a lot of frivolity, a lot of gaming. But you have to forget that. One rule applies. A slow boat has never won the America's Cup."