Louis Vuitton Act 11 - Day 1: Alinghi first, Victory Challenge second, Shosholoza third

Despite having finished sixth in the first race, a victory in the second one secured the top spot for the Defender of the America's Cup in this first day of fleet racing. Once again, weather conditions made life difficult for everybody sailing in Valencia, with light and shifty winds.

In the first race, Victory Challenge scored a comfortable win but, unfortunately, slipped in the second one. Similarly, Mascalzone Latino - Capitalia Team was second in the first race and tenth in the second one, a fate shared with +39 who slipped from third to dead last.

Alinghi is now first overall and according to Ed Baird, Alinghi helmsman, "In race 1, I didn’t get off the line too well and we had to scramble from there. We had a pretty strong call for going left, fought hard to get it and then in the end the right came in so it all fell against us in that one and we had to battle back to a reasonable place in the fleet. Then in the 2nd race, we again had a strong call for the left for a different reason, we got off the line a lot more cleanly, and were able to hold our lane. Sure enough the left was the right place to be and we enjoyed it from there".

Team Shosholoza showed an excellent and stable performance. Despite finishing fifth in both races, the disparate results of the rest of the teams resulted in the South Africans taking the third place overall.

Equally surprising, but the other way round, was the perofrmance of BMW Oracle. The recently-crowned winner of Louis Vuitton Act 10 had two mediocre races. "That was a tough day at the office,” said BMW ORACLE navigator, Peter Isler. "We had very light air, with big shifts and puffs. When you fleet race in those conditions, the course opens right up. Some teams are going to make very big gains and others are going to lose out. Working through the left-over swell in that light air made it very difficult and the crews were having to constantly trim the sails to help the boats accelerate through the chop. We had a great comeback in the second race, so we are upbeat about that.”