Louis Vuitton Cup confusion

Can you explain that again please....

If you though the America's Cup was incomprehensibly complicated, wait until you see what they have in store for the Louis Vuitton Cup - the series that will select the challenger from the present ten syndicates. Read on.

After many months of debate the current challenger group, which consists of ten syndicates from seven countries, has devised a new event format that they believe will fulfil the needs of the challenger movement. It will allow strong two-boat teams to spend more of their time training, whilst also giving many of the viable one-boat programmes plenty of racing and the chance to go all the way to the Louis Vuitton Cup Finals, and beyond, if they are good enough.

The strongest teams from the last Cup, some of them returning to try again this time, believed that the event format should be changed for future Cups so that the better teams should race only other good teams, spending the rest of their time with their own in-house training; but at the same time allowing smaller teams to benefit from constant competition.

In Auckland during the most recent America's Cup season in 1999/2000 the Louis Vuitton Cup winner ultimately was not strong enough to beat the Defender, Team New Zealand and take the America's Cup from Auckland. Some of the stronger challengers believed time was wasted racing against weak syndicates. Other syndicates however benefited from the long competition and improved dramatically over the four-month period of the Louis Vuitton Cup. Another criticism of the most recent event was that the Louis Vuitton Cup winner was so exhausted after four months of constant competition that the 10 days break they had before the America's Cup Match wasn't enough time to recover and prepare to face the Defender.

The racing for the sixth Louis Vuitton Cup will begin on the 1st October 2002 and the Challenger should be known sometime in the third week of January 2003. The event starts off with two Round Robins, where each syndicate will race each of the others once per round for one point per win. At the end of these two rounds a pecking order based on races won will have been established with the fleet seeded from one to eight. The two syndicates having finished ninth and tenth after the Round Robins will be eliminated at this point.

The Louis Vuitton Cup Quarter Finals begin on 12 November 2002 and see the remaining eight boats split into two groups, the Double Chance and Single Chance groups, according to their ranking (one to four - Double Chance, and five to eight - Single Chance). The top ranked teams in each group (ie number one and number five) choose their opposition for a best of seven series. All things being equal team number one and team number five will choose the lowest two ranked boats in their respective groups (ie number four and number eight) so as to have the best chances of progressing to the next stage. This leaves teams three and seven to race teams two and six respectively, also in a best of seven series.

At the end of this round the two Single Chance losers are eliminated and the two Double Chance Winners qualify directly for the Semi-Finals. The Quarter Finals Repechage then takes place which sees the two losers from the Double Chance group exercise their second chance against the winners of the two pairs in the Single Chance group, again in a best of seven series. The winners from these two pairs make up the third and fourth teams for the Semi-Finals - the losers are eliminated.

The Louis Vuitton Cup Semi-Finals, a best of seven series with four teams racing, starts on 9th December 2002. The top two teams would have both benefited from 18 days without competition, time they will have used for modifications and in-house training and testing with their second boats (if they have one).

This will be the first time that this pair has raced each other since the early Round Robins, more than five weeks previously. Again the new system helps the strongest team or the team that is improving fastest, by keeping their development out of the limelight until it is needed. The winner of this series goes straight through to the Louis Vuitton Cup Finals.

The second pair in the Semi-Finals, also race a best of seven series. The loser of this side is eliminated and the winner must then go up against the loser of the Double Chance side Semi-Finalist in the best of seven Semi-Finals Repechage series. The winner of this series becomes the second Finalist.

The Finals is designed to be a dress rehearsal for the America's Cup itself, that is to say it is a best of nine series where the first team to win five races wins all. The winner takes the Pui Forcat-crafted Louis Vuitton Cup silver trophy and becomes the Challenger, the team that will race the Defender, Team New Zealand, for the America's Cup. The Louis Vuitton Cup Finals start on 11th January 2003 and is interspersed with a layday after every three races.