America's Cup: Percy turns the tide towards Italians

When Iain Percy ambles through the door of his favourite café here, the Movida, on the waterfront Via Amiraglio Staeti of this gem of a Sicilian town, there is a noticeable ripple of excitement among the eligible young women on both sides of the counter.

An Olympic gold medallist in Sydney 2000, the 29-year-old from Winchester has captured hearts and affections in droves here as the skipper of one of three Italian teams challenging to win the America's Cup in 2007, not least because Sicily is his team's home base.

Alongside him is the other half of what is known as "Ian squared", the one called Walker, his newly signed tactician. The double Olympic silver medallist is looking more relaxed and smiling than ever he did when he was skipper of the British GBR Challenge's fraught foray into the last cup, in Auckland in 2002-03.

Andrew "Bart" Simpson, recovering from a whack over the head and a ducking while trying to control a rogue spinnaker, forms the remaining member of an all-Brit triumvirate powering the +39 Challenge team (the name is Italy's international telephone dialling code) and life is whole lot better than a year ago.

Then, Percy was wrestling with the transformation from a singlehanded dinghy sailor to skipper and helmsman in charge of a crew of 16 on an 80ft hi-tech keelboat. At the same time Walker was almost more wound up than his charges as he coached Shirley Robertson and the Sarahs, Webb and Ayton, to gold in Athens, and Simpson was ruing being one of the best Finn sailors in the world but sitting in the shadows as Ben Ainslie won his second gold. Ainslie is now the B boat helmsman for Team New Zealand, steadfastly loyal to the cause, and absorbing huge draughts of experience as a big-boat driver. But he may have had the odd secret smile as he watched Percy and his team engineer the occasional nervous flurry when they raced the New Zealand A boat.

The crew of +39 are an amazing brotherhood of Olympic sailors, most of them fiercely individual Finn singlehanders, who are learning to become an America's Cup force. That they should be happy to do so under Percy's leadership is testament both to their respect for him and their enthusiasm to win.

Further along the row of 12 compounds is the Elba-based Mascalzone Latino, 90 per cent Italian and led by an extrovertly emotional Vincenzo Onorato. He may have found a way of involving the contractually sidelined three-times Cup winner Russell Coutts, who will be the tactician on Onorato's 40-footer next year. Coutts cannot sail in the Cup, but preventing discussion and analysis would be difficult.

Between the two sits Luna Rossa, formerly Prada, which the fashion boss Pat-rizio Bertelli now shares with the Italian telecom company TIM. The passionate Bertelli has taken a less prominent role and handed the day-to-day running to skipper Francesco de Angelis and, ashore, the former Calvin Klein managing director Anthony Romano. In turn, De Angelis has brought in the young Australian helmsman James Spithill.

They are beginning to look a formidable unit, and Percy acknowledges: "Spithill is the best starting helmsman we have sailed against." For his part, Spithill is keeping a careful eye on Percy. "I would be a fool to take anyone like that lightly," he says.

Percy knows that, if +39 click, they could be a superbly talented unit and that if their new boat, due in March, is on the pace, they will strike fear into many, not least the top trio of challengers, Luna Rossa, TNZ, and the San Francisco-based BMW Oracle. One or two, like France's K-Challenge, are teetering financially.

De Angelis gives the new America's Cup road show, all teams racing each other instead of training alone, seven out of 10, and Percy says: "I am enjoying the sailing side more than in years."

Both players and spectators have been given a taste of the 21st-century America's Cup. Big teams benefit commercially, new teams can fast-track development. The supposedly independent America's Cup Management need to be flexible. To turn off the tap would not be clever.