Chris Dickson: "We aimed high with USA-87"

This is the message Chirs Dickson, CEO and skipper of BMW Oracle Racing, wanted to convey in today's early morning press conference. There was a suspicion that something important was to be announced when the Challenger of Record invited the media for such a meeting before the normal Skipper press conference.

And important it was. The American challenger will be using their brand new (and much discussed) boat, USA-87, as of tomorrow for all official racing in Louis Vuitton Acts 10 and 11. Apparently, the decision was taken earlier, but the team had to wait for the official measurement certificate from Ken Mcalpine, Chief measurer of the America's Cup, that the new yacht was indeed an America's Cup Class one.

Although he skillfully eluded some tricky questions from the large number of journalists present, Chris Dickson focused on the qualities of the new boat, calling her "perharps the most innovative one" in the history of the current American Cup Class boats. BMW Oracle did not want to make small, incremental changes to their previous boat USA-76 but rather first "cleared the table" and started designing "without any restriction". Obviously, the team relied upon the vast experience and knowhow of its designing, building and sailing teams to come up with a "radical" boat.

BMW Oracle training with USA-87 in front of the Malvarosa beach in Valencia. Photo copyright: Gilles Martin-Raget / BMW Oracle Racing

When asked if the designers were inspired by any "family" of boats of the current America's Cup class, his answer was quite clear, "we were inspired by the fast family of boats, never looked backwards and aimed high". USA-87 is faster than USA-76, according to Dickson, and the team decided to use even if she has sailed for only 20 days.

Still, despite their confidence on the new boat, BMW Oracle's main preoccupation will be to skillfully balance between the necessity to learn about the new boat and the fear of revealing too many secrets to Alinghi. According to Dickson, "Alinghi was and still remains the benchmark". BMW Oracle's number one goal hasn't changed. The American challenger wants to win the 32nd America's Cup in Valencia, meaning that their number one enemy is Alinghi. Dickson stated that they will not be rushing to "give an advantage to Alinghi" and diplomatically and ambiguously avoided answering the question whether that meant intentionally losing the races against the Defender of the America's Cup.

According to Dickson, presenting the new boat in the third year of a 4-year America's Cup campaign can be considered late and as a result his team weighed all the factors and options and opted for the use of the new boat as soon as it was feasible. It can be a double-edged sword for any team, since if you wait too long to race with a new boat you lose precious time learning about her.

Nevertheless, before winning the America's Cup, BMW Oracle must win the Louis Vuitton Cup and in order to do that they will inevitably have to face the brand new boats of their closest competitors, Luna Rossa and Emirates Team New Zealand, ITA-86 and NZL-84 respectively. BMW Oracle raced against both teams during the spring training season here in Valencia but obviously declined commenting on the results of these friendly test matches. He stated that both new boats are faster than their respective "older" companions but failed to make any comparison to USA-87.

According to Dickson, all three boats are very different between them and in fact are three very different answers to the exact same question: "What is a fast America's Cup boat in Valencia?". According to the BMW Oracle skipper, if we lined up NZL-84, ITA-86 and USA-87 in one room and took off their covers we would all be surprised by their differences. Yet they all are very fast boats.

Without any doubt, this surprise announcement by BMW Oracle will only add interest and excitement in this year's racing.

Note: If you are interested in hearing the 20-minute conference just click here. It is an admitedly low-quality WAV file of the press conference, around 5MB and compatible with any audio player. Turn up the volume. Being the first ever recording on Valencia Sailing, we promise much better quality next time.