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Team Prada

Team Prada has completed its training session in Auckland

lundi 11 mars 2002

Team Prada has just completed its training session in the Hauraki Gulf, New Zealand. Since last October Francesco de Angelis, with his crew and the rest of the team, has been working in Auckland carrying out a long series of tests, technical evaluations, local weather conditions analysis and match race practice.

The team has been training with three America’s Cup America's Cup #AmericasCup Class yachts, Luna Rossa ITA 45 and the two Young America USA 53 and USA 58, fitting into the busy big boat schedule many sessions with two small match racing one-design yachts, Tom 28, designed and built in Italy.

During the first phase of this southern hemisphere period, the team focused on the assessment of a number of technical and experimental modifications of the yachts, while the objective of phase two has been specific crew training and practice. There have been many opportunities for all the teams in Auckland (Alinghi, Switzerland ; GBR Challenge, Great Britain ; One World, USA ; Oracle, USA ; Victory Challenge, Sweden), including the Defender Team New Zealand, to train and confront each other on the stretch of sea where the racing courses of the forthcoming Louis Vuitton and America’s Cup America's Cup #AmericasCup will be positioned.

Throughout the period, the Prada crew has worked in close contact with the design team – based in Milan, Italy – accomplishing many tasks and assisting the designers in their long and critical research & development path on hulls, appendages, rigs and sails.

The crew’s activity has been really strenuous, based on 6 to 7 days working weeks and 12 hour-long days beginning at 6.30am with a physical workout and ending at 6.30pm, once again in the team’s gym. Besides sailing, the crew has had to withstand a tough and intense physical training programme, coordinated by strength and conditioning coach Vernon Neville, aimed at increasing power and endurance. Tests carried out at the beginning and end of the period have shown a remarkable gain of performance for all the athletes involved, who were divided into groups according to their position on board.

The activity in New Zealand waters for team Prada is now over and by the end of next week the boats and equipment will be ready to be shipped back to Italy via cargo. Rod Davis and Gavin Brady, with their respective Prada crews, will stay over in Auckland to compete in the Steinlager/Line 7 Regatta, international match racing event organized by the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron from 19 to 24 March. In the meantime work is in progress in the Prada boatyard in Grosseto, Italy, where the first of the two new America’s Cup Class yachts of the team - Luna Rossa ITA 74 - is currently being built. The construction of the second boat, on which the designers are still working, will commence later in the year, in time for the start of the Louis Vuitton Cup (the challenger selection series), October 2002. Team Prada will be sailing again in Italy approximately from mid May.

Information Team Prada


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