America's Cup, an Australian team also comes forward. There are now six challengers

With just a few days to go before the start of the preliminary regattas in Cagliari, scheduled for 21 to 24 May, for the America's Cup world the news is of some significance: in Naples for next year's edition number 38 there will also be an Australian team, which becomes the sixth challenger to Emirates Team New Zealand. There are many indications that the Kiwis have given the Kangaroos a nudge by giving them the Te Rehutai boat with which they won against Luna Rossa in 2021, although on a purely scientific level it seems a little strange: the Kiwi is the world's laziest bird because it sleeps 20 hours out of 24 and never shows up while the Kangaroo jumps where it can, and sometimes even throws a punch. Australia is a major player in the top regatta: it was an Australian team that snatched the Cup from the Americans after 132 years of domination. It was 1983, the boat was called Australia II the helmsman and skipper John Bertrand, the owner Alan Bond, a financier of not many scruples. After that edition the Aussies competed a few more times but had actually been missing for twenty-six years. Many sailors have made other boats fast, and in fact there will be two very well known good sailors in the cockpit and at the helm. Tom Slingsby and Glen Ashby, one starring for Oracle in 2013 and then other teams, the other skipper of Emirates New Zealand in 2017 when the Cup returned to Auckland to stay there until now. Glenn is also one of the men involved in the Ferrari Hypersail project. 

John Winning Jnr., champion of the Australian 18-footer and winner of the Sydney-Hobart 2022 with the Andoo Comanche programme is the man indicated as the weaver of the plot leading to the challenge. Launching the challenge will be the Sydney-based Royal Prince Edward Yacht Club, which in recent days, in advance of official announcements, has informed its members with a dedicated letter.

Grant Simmer, who was part of the victorious Australia II campaign in 1983, will be Chief Executive Officer of Team Australia. This is what he said: "This campaign has a deep meaning for me. I have been in the America's Cup since the early 1980s with the legendary Team Australia II, which changed the history of the Cup forever. Since then I have taken part in every edition of the America's Cup, including organising the defence in Australia, in Fremantle, considered one of the best in the competition's history. Over the decades, Australian talent has been dispersed among teams around the world and today, thanks to John Winning with this new challenge, we have the opportunity to bring our talent together again."

And the other teams? Luna Rossa is working hard at its base in Cagliari, awaits the event and is considered the one to beat among the challengers, if only for the continuity of their work since Barcelona. The other team that promises to be solid is the American one: leader Ken Read has left his role as North Sails president to devote himself to the American Racing Challenger team with a prospect (it seems already financed) of two, three editions. Like him many other Americans. This after many had been thinking for many months about a Cup without Americans: it would have been a bit too much. At work Tudor Alinghi with skipper-helmsman Paul Goodison, a strong Englishman who has lived on Lake Garda for years. At work the French of La Roche Posay with Bruno Dubois and Stephan Kandler at the controls with young sailors in the boat.

There is a dark cloud over Sir Ben Ainslie's Athena Racing Cahellenger of Record: the sponsor of the Barcelona edition, Ineos (Sir Jim Ratcliffe), after 'the quarrel', wants all the technical equipment left to the team, which cost him a considerable investment declared at around 170 million pounds. The question is a thorny one, and probably related to who does what, i.e. Ineos was only a sponsor but the organisation and management company was Athena or did Ineos have an active part?