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madforsailing Le Defi crewman Tim Kroger talks about life inside Le Defi Areva camp

Getting back to the project, the central figures behind Le Defi Areva are Xavier le Desquen, General Manager of the project Luc Gellusseau, Technical Director (who was in charge of the sails on Marc Pajot's French Kiss in 1986/7 and has since been a central figure to the Corum Sailing Team, along with Pierre Mas, Le Defi's Sports Director. Kroger was on Lawrie Smith's Intrum Justitia with Mas in the 1993/4 Whitbread and then spent 1.5 years with the Corum Sailing Team, when they won the Mumm 36 Worlds in 1995. "For me it was an easy decision to join them. The Corum Sailing Team I viewed that as one of my most enjoyable and successful times of sailing career ever," says Kroger.

Among the afterguard there are a choice of drivers. Aside from the experienced Gellusseau, there is Philippe Presti, a Finn and Soling Olympic sailor and twice French national match racing champion. Luc Pillot is the 470 Gold Medallist from Seoul and currently number 8 in the ISAF match race rankings. Sebastien Destremau, who was on Ville de Paris in 1995 and was 1996 Tour Voile winner and part of the Corum team. They also have young blood in Sebastien Col, who aged 24 already has Laser, First Class 8, Melges 24 and match racing national titles to his name.

"The decision over who will drive the boat will be taken from these guys, who works best with whom - the combination, the general attitude and ideas," says Kroger. "We have 36 sailors, I am one of them, and among this group, there will be a team formed but it won't be so rigid that there is 16 on the A boat and 16 on the B boat. It will be a flow and development. Maybe some will work better in light airs and maybe some will be better in heavy airs for example."

"We don't have this A boat and B boat attitude," he continues. "We all work together and have this very good spirit - that's one thing I find very good in our project. We don't talk about A or B teams. We are a team."

They are also trying to combine youth and experience. "There is new blood, but also some of the old battlehorses of previous French America's Cup challenges like Fabrice Devet [past two French AC challenges and 1990 Soling World and European Champion] but there are a lot of really young guys like Philippe Presti and guys like that. There is a good spirit among these people to work together. Then there's guys like Paul MacKenzie - he was in the Finn in Atlanta and came sixth for Australia. He lives in France and he's basically training to be one of the grinders. It's not like you come out of the Finn and you automatically have to drive the boat.

"It's funny because, you have this mixture in the team between offshore sailors and Olympic dinghy sailors and if you have a guy who is used to small boats without winches and they find themselves trimming the headsail on this huge boat with a big winch in front of them, as the experienced person on board you have to look after them a little bit. That was obviously what we did last year. Now the guys know the loads and we are working on performance. The more you sail the more you get used to it. Because of the weight of the boat you get really conscious about breaking things, because everything is right at the limit..."

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