ZURICH. Alinghi has announced its next generation campaign, committing the Lake Geneva syndicate to a fresh cycle built around young Swiss sailors and a new boat development programme. The announcement, made on the shores of the lake where the team trains, sets the course for the next several seasons of competition.
At the core of the campaign is a two-pronged plan: a development squad of sailors in their twenties, given time in the boat and responsibility for its evolution, and a technical programme aimed at mastering the latest generation of foiling yachts. The team will contest the international circuit while building towards the sport's biggest prizes. A base on the lake will house the shore crew, the design office and the training programme under one roof.
The background is a name that carries weight far beyond sailing. Alinghi's America's Cup victories in 2003 and 2007 made it the most famous syndicate in Swiss sport, and its years on Lake Geneva have kept the country's sailing culture at the highest level. The new campaign is an attempt to pass that inheritance to a generation that was still at school when the Cup was won.
The numbers involved are, by the standards of sailing, serious. Campaigns at this level run to budgets in the tens of millions of francs over a cycle, with the boat itself, its foils and systems, and the shore team accounting for the largest shares. The foiling yachts at the heart of the programme reach speeds above 50 knots, crewed by athletes who are as much engineers as sailors.
The mechanism of the modern game is flight. The yachts rise out of the water on foils, and the racing is won by teams that can keep the boat airborne through every manoeuvre, tacking and gybing without touching down. It is a discipline of tiny margins, where a software setting or a trim decision can be worth boat lengths, and the development programme is aimed at mastering exactly those margins.
Reaction has been enthusiastic within the sailing world. The national federation welcomed the commitment to young Swiss sailors, the Lake Geneva clubs see a pathway for their best youth products, and the team's leadership has spoken of a duty to keep the country's flag at the front of the fleet. Rival teams, for their part, know better than to underestimate a syndicate with Alinghi's record.
The syndicate's founder said: “The next generation will not be given the team, they will be given the chance to earn it.” The distinction, he suggested, is the whole point of the campaign.
The money picture rests, as it always has, on the backing of its patron and a circle of partners attracted by the team's name and the lake's stage. Sponsorship at this level buys association with one of sport's most elegant spectacles, and the syndicate's commercial team has structured partnerships to run across the whole cycle rather than regatta by regatta.
What happens next is a winter of work. The new boat will be launched and trialled on the lake, the development squad will be put through a demanding programme of training and racing, and the season's circuit will provide the first real measure of the campaign's progress. The big prizes lie further out, and the team is careful to say so.
The wider significance for Swiss sport is the continuity the campaign represents. Sailing at the highest level is one of the few arenas where Switzerland has stood at the very top, and the next generation project is a bet that it can stand there again. The lake that taught the team to win will now teach its successors.
The announcement is made, the boat is being built and the young sailors are already on the water. The next chapter of the Alinghi story has begun, and Lake Geneva will write the first pages. The syndicate has never been one to start a story it did not intend to finish.