33rd America's Cup - Deed of Gift Challenge Preview

After many court battles the 33rd America's Cup finally arrives what is to be a Deed of Gift best of three races. Though it seems even after the racing on the water is passed, it is not sure we have seen the end of the tunnel for this legal battle filled edition. As there is still some pending issues to resolve between the two teams like the manufacturer of country of origin regarding the sails of Swiss Defender team Alinghi.

Coming from the successful 32nd edition the climax from Summer 2007 has been about USA challenging team Oracle declaring the Swiss defender Alinghi is twisting the rules in its favour, and going against the Deed of Gift of the America's Cup, thanks to an accommodating Challenger of Record. So far we have seen the USA team winning all cases in the New York Supreme Court, and from there onwards a deed of gift challenge with a maximum aloud size of craft to ninety by ninety feet was started. While it looked at some time that the two would resolve there issues it never had to be. The first Supreme Court battle was about if Desafio was an accredited Challenger of Record or not. This was the first legal win in a triumphant New York Supreme Court challenge by BMW Oracle. After this other important court rules included the gigantic BOR90 of Oracle waterline length, keel, and if Ras Al Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates the place chosen by Defender Alinghi was an accepted venue for a Deed of Gift race. As we today know this venue has not been accepted, and after Alinghi flirted with Australia to give a Winter Southern hemisphere race, the choice as the judge suggested finished on Valencia.

So this is a very small review of what happened in the last two and half years, and coming Monday 8th February if provided with accepted weather conditions we will have the first of a best of three races. There seems to have been a chance of more races then a best of three, in a five or seven format, but the defender has declared it to be a best of three challenge. Whatever it will be, I sincerely hope that when this is finished we can go back to a similar format as seen in the previous three editions of the cup, which where super entertaining. The cup will also be widely visible in TV with two billion reachable viewers, plus a free live broadcast online on the official site of americascup.com.

www.americascup.com