Sailing: GBR Challenge win respect in defeat

GBR Challenge did not win the race, but they won the respect of their opponents, Dennis Conner's Stars & Stripes, after losing by 20 seconds in Britain's first America's Cup race for more than 15 years.

As the first race of the Louis Vuitton Cup – the eliminating contest for the America's Cup – got underway here, much was made of the renewal of hostilities between a crew based on the Isle of Wight and one representing the New York Yacht Club, a confrontation which gave rise to the whole event 151 years ago.

This was different. There was no humiliation and, but for a slight trip at the start of the 18.5-mile race, the British team, skippered by Ian Walker, could just as easily have been ahead, not just by the same margin, but much more.

Stars & Stripes, skippered by Kenny Read, surrounded by a depth of experience unmatched in any of the eight other challenge syndicates, and with the master tactician Tom Whidden on board, managed to rebuff attack after attack from GBR who, going into the final downwind leg, were still just six seconds astern.

The Stars & Stripes strategist, Peter Isler, admitted afterwards that, had the first attempt to cross GBR gone against them instead of giving them control by the thickness of a cigarette paper, then they would have been playing catch-up for the rest of the day. Walker was equally convinced that he and his 15-man crew would just have sailed away.

Both Walker and his tactician, Adrian Stead, paid tribute to the way the crew had overcome a primary winch breakage on the second upwind leg, to sail the boat almost flawlessly, especially downwind. They rejected the thought that, being forced to start, downspeed, at the right-hand end of the line had cost them the race.

On the same course in Long Bay on the Hauraki Gulf, in a shifty, seven to 15-knot south-westerly, the French challenge was demolished by a powerful-looking Alinghi Challenge, from Switzerland, skippered by the man who twice won the Cup for New Zealand, Russell Coutts.

A similar fate was waiting for the underdogs who are rapidly becoming the darlings of the event, the second Italian challenge, Mascalzone Latino. The Seattle-based crew OneWorld, skippered by two Australians, Peter Gilmour and James Spithill, had what amounted to little more than a training run.

The major confrontation on the second course was between the winners of the Louis Vuitton Cup in 2000, Italy's Prada, and the successors of the team they beat, AmericaOne, bought by the computer software billionaire Larry Ellison and developed into Oracle-BMW Racing. Ellison was on board to help, but not helm, his yacht to a 42-second victory. "They sailed well. They never left any door open," acknowledged Francesco de Angelis, who is now back as skipper of Prada.

LOUIS VUITTON CUP (Auckland) Round robin 1: Alinghi (Swit) bt Le Defi (Fr) 4min 48sec; Oracle BMW (US) bt Prada (It) 0:43; Stars & Stripes (US) bt Great Britain Challenge (GB) 0:20; Oneworld (US) bt Mascalzone (It) 5:43.