Ed Gorman comments...

on the spectacular launch of GBR Challenge on Friday

Above: prior to the bottle of bubbly not smashing

Andy Beadsworth, one of three potential drivers in the GBR Challenge squad, acknowledged the contrast in fortunes but said he was not convinced the two aspects were as closely related as might be assumed. "The relevance of match racing and starting in the America's Cup Class is not clear," he said at the naming ceremony. "Although we would like to be good at the match racing side, we have to decide how much resources we are prepared to put into achieving that...we would like to be doing better than we are," he added.

Amid all the speculation about who will do what - the current rumour mill has it that Andy Green may start with Ian Walker taking over for the races - Beadsworth was clear that no decisions have yet been taken. "We don't know who is going to drive the boat yet," he said, adding that the aim at present was to keep all the possible candidates moving forward together.

As for the boat itself, Peter Bentley has run his rule over it for madforsailing elsewhere. I talked to Derek Clark, the design co-ordinator and we ran through the various obvious points - the less extreme version of the 'knuckle bow', the closed-in transom, the deep custom-designed cockpit, the chamfered sheer line and so on. What struck me, however, was his quiet confidence about this boat, despite the short lead time, the relatively small design budget and the fact that there is only one boat in the programme.

Clark believes the team has benefitted from remaining small in number and tightly focussed on limited and achieveable objectives. ("You have to be careful that you don't do too much too quickly or set objectives and goals above what is reasonable for a group of people to do.") He is convinced that Wight Lightning or GBR70 will be quicker than JPN 52 and NZL60 - at model stage in the tank it was certainly faster than the GBR Challenge's own mock-up of NZL60.

It all adds up to confidence that a top-four placing in the Louis Vuitton remains a realistic objective. "Definitely - I think that is a sensible and achievable objective," Clark said. "I'd love to go further, we all would. But once you get that far, other things could happen. Being in the top-four is a viable and realistic objective - it's a proper sporting and business objective."

Below: Princess Anne is introduced to the team. She recently visited them in New Zealand too.