Paul Cayard: Everything is possible and could helm ESP-97 in Louis Vuitton Cup

This morning, Paul Cayard, one of the world's sailing legends, gave his first press conference after his recent arrival in Valencia and the start of his work as technical consultant of Desafío Español, the Spanish America's Cup challenger.

Paul Cayard's first impressions

Cayard has only been with the team for four days and as a result it's too early for him to thoroughly judge the team. His first impression though is "positive" and that of a "very professional" team with a professional leadership. According to Cayard, Desafío Español has done a good job with their available resources, mainly time and not money as most people would think. They started with a proven platform, the One World package from 2003, wasted no time and took the right decisions. It "smells pretty good" to Cayard.

If time is such a valubale commodity, then an obvious question would be if the 6 weeks (3 in February and 3 in March) he will spend with the team are enough. He is confident it is a correct amount of time that will allow him to help the team, not only on the water.

Paul Cayard (right) and Agustín Zulueta, Desafío Español general manager, at the team's base. Valencia, 15 February 2007. Photo copyright Pierre Orphanidis / Valencia Sailing

Paul Cayard's role in the Louis Vuitton Cup

This was the question the Spanish media were dying to ask. What role, if any, will Cayard have in the Louis Vuitton Cup, or beyond. Both Zulueta and Cayard stressed that the current contract ends at the end of March and that nothing has been decided beyond that date. As Cayard stressed himself in Spanish "todo es posible" (everything is possible). His agenda is not fully booked for that period and it could be possible he helmed during the Louis Vuitton Cup. Nevertheless, it is still too early to decide whether there could be any role for him.

Paul Cayard's goal with Desafío Español

The American sailor stated he felt "reasonably optimistic" the Spanish team could reach the semifinals of the Louis Vuitton Cup and that could be considered a success. An interesting fact according to him is that everybody in the America's Cup thinks they can win it. Still, like Formula 1 car racing, there are some realities. There are teams that spent 200 million euros and have been training for almost 7 years, in 2 consecutive Cups. As a result, in real life success isn't always a reflection of the position on the leaderboard.

For him, making it to the semi finals of the Louis Vuitton Cup will be a very good performance given the tough fight given by Areva and Victory Challenge. Emirates Team NZ, Luna Rossa and BMW Oracle are "where they are going to be". Their potential for further improvement is smaller. On the other hand, Desafío Español, Areva and Victory Challenge have probably more potential and the question is how fast they can evolve in the next three months. Cayard finds it possible that one of these three "smaller" teams could beat one the three "bigger" and make it to the finals. Obviously, he didn't rule out the possibility Desafío Español won the America's Cup.

Will Alinghi win the 32nd America's Cup?

Although not directly related to his work with the Spanish challenger, one could not help asking the American sailing legend who he thought would win this America's Cup. In his opinion Alinghi will be "tough". They did a good job by creating the Louis Vuitton Acts and generating more racing between the Defender and the Challengers. They gave themselves a "huge present" because they are constantly advancing and eliminated one of the big negatives of being the Defender, that is the isolation from all other teams.

They have been very clever and they will be the only team that knows what is going on right before the first race of the America's Cup. In Act 13 they will race all the brand new yachts of the challengers (the big unknown so far) and measure up against them. If he was Alinghi he would race with SUI-75 and have the great chance to measure all new yachts a mere week before the start of the Louis Vuitton Cup. Then they could use the results and continue their in house training with SUI-91 and SUI-100.

Audio: Press conference (in English and Spanish, 33 minutes).
Listen to Paul Cayard telling all these himself by clicking on the green play button. You can pause or stop the audio with the control buttons, just like with any other music player: