Alinghi wins the iShares Cup

With five European venues and 79 races behind them, Alinghi celebrates the iShares Cup season win in Amsterdam! Ed Baird, Rodney Ardern, Lorenzo Mazza and Piet van Nieuwenhuijzen won the iShares Cup season trophy today as well as the Amsterdam event trophy, making this their fourth consecutive event win. The team sailed their first race on an eXtreme 40 in May in Lugano, Switzerland, with mixed results and a capsize, but with these early learning curve hiccoughs out of the way, the crew settled in to a steady winning streak that saw victory in Hyères, France; Cowes, UK; Kiel, Germany and today in Amsterdam. This iShares Cup season is part of a much wider picture for the America’s Cup Defender, Alinghi, and is just one of several multihull learning platforms that the sailing team has been focusing on this summer. The Defender faces the possibility of a Deed of Gift (DoG) match, something currently being pursued by the American challenger BMW Oracle Racing in the New York Court of Appeals, and so the team is preparing for all eventualities. Alinghi is continuing to build the DoG boat in Switzerland and will continue to hone its multihull sailing skills with the Décision 35s on Lake Geneva (where the team is currently leading the Challenge Julius Baer with one event to go) and the 41footer ‘Alinghi Black’ in Valencia. In parallel the team cannot neglect its monohull training and continues to race on the Vrolijk IRC66 Numbers and the maxi yacht Alfa Romeo and with an eye on the team’s vision of a multi-challenge America’s Cup, Brad Butterworth, Alinghi team skipper, is organising challenger meetings this autumn to plan for the future.