South Africa enters the America's Cup

Ed Gorman speaks to the players involved and observes how professional sailing is almost exclusively a white sport

Not many people were expecting an America's Cup challenge for the Valencia edition in three year's time to emerge from South Africa, a nation which has been in flux for a decade and which has hardly been a force to be reckoned with in world sailing in recent years.

However this week the South African 2007 Challenge went public, setting its stall out as the first ever syndicate to represent South Africa in international sport's oldest competition.

Even as the team gets itself underway, it is already clear that, should it get to Valencia and take part in the Louis Vuitton challenger series, it will make a huge impression. This will be not so much for its racing prowess, as for the team's make-up and the likelihood that among its crew there will be several black sailors.

In 153 years of competition, the South Africans will be among the first black people ever to sail in an America's Cup regatta, a startling fact which only underlines how elite professional sailing around the world has remained an almost exclusively white province. In Europe, for example, this correspondent has seen only one or two black sailors in eight years on the circuit.

The South African Challenge has as one of its goals the expression of that nation's ethnic diversity in its make-up and there are hopes that five or six of its race crew will be black sailors. The syndicate enjoys official backing from the South African government in the form of Ngconde Balfour, the minister of sport, and it is actively recruiting young black sailors through a youth foundation in Cape Town sponsored by one of the team's founders, Salvatore Sarno.

Sarno, an Italian-born South African resident of 14 years standing, is the chairman of the Mediterranean Shipping Company in South Africa and is the Managing Director of the challenge. He will work alongside Cape Town yachtsman Geoff Meek who will lead the sailing team and Britain's Paul Standbridge who is sailing manager, a role he fulfilled in the last Cup for the GBR Challenge. Another key player is the talented young British designer, Jason Ker, who is de-camping from Southampton to Cape Town next week to begin work on the lines of his first attempt at an America's Cup Class.

The syndicate has money for its first year and is aiming for a total budget ranging at the bottom end of around E25 million and E100 million at the top. Meek believes the money will be found in the resurgent South African economy and says the early indications are encouraging. "In the short-term, it's looking good," he said.

People close to the team are talking of it as an exciting "adventure" but there is also a strong sense of purpose and Meek has no doubt it will make it to the challenger series. Ker put it like this: "It's a first challenge - we hope to do a respectable first challenge, rather than taking part just for the sake of it."

But while no one is expecting anything spectacular, there is serious intent as evidenced by the team's purchase of one of Prada's 2000 generation Luna Rossa yachts, ITA48, which arrived at the team base in the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town on Monday and is now being prepared for trials and training under Standbridge's direction.

In the meantime and while the money hunting continues, Ker is eyeing the challenge he faces. He will work as part of a team with partners which include Stellenbosch University and the University of Cape Town, while technical assistance will also be sourced overseas. Ker had made approaches to the GBR Challenge both for this cycle and the last one, but did not meet with a positive response. He first discussed the South African programme with Meek just before Christmas and agreed a deal in mid-January.

"I've got enough confidence that it's going to go a reasonable distance for me to up-sticks and go down there," said Ker who is moving to Cape Town with his wife and two young children. The plan is to design two boats with drawings for the first finished by the end of this year. Ker seems unconcerned at his lack of experience in a field where the margins are now extremely tight between competitive boats and also-rans.

"It's not really starting from nothing for me because you can see where everyone else has got to in terms of shape and dimensions from existing boats - the difficult thing is not whether you've done it before but progressing from where everyone is now. You've just got to go through the process of design and come up with something better than what's out there now and sufficiently better so that it will be competitive in 2007," he
said.

The South African boats will have a beaded wave pattern on their hulls in the colours of the South African flag. They will be called Shosolosa, a Xhosa word meaning 'Good Luck' or 'Go Forward'.

For Standbridge who now lives in Cape Town the team has materialised at the perfect time and he seems to be enjoying the challenge it has offered him. "It's quite an adventure," he said, taking a break from working on ITA48. "It has all happened rather quickly - I was very sceptical at first but we are underway, bashing ahead and recruiting people."