2010 Audi Med Cup Just Two Months Away.

The void left after the 33rd America’s Cup is still to be filled. The new Defender, BMW ORACLE are talking with teams and planning the beginnings of a strategy, but in the meantime, teams with America’s Cup pretentions have the Louis Vuitton Series and the Audi Med Cup to keep their teams together as a competitive unit.

The Audi Med Cup 2010 starts in two months time with the the first regatta; the Portugal Trophy. Activity throughout the TP52 fleet has been building up progressively over recent months.

Small changes to the TP52 Class Box Rule mean that all of the teams which plan to compete at this season’s five Audi MedCup Circuit regattas or the TP52 World Championships in October are required to have made the prescribed modifications to their existing boats: adding 150kgs of weight to the keel to compensate for the reduction in crew weight, moving to a ‘square-top’ mainsail with twin backstays and increasing spinnaker area and adopting bowsprits.

Organisers expect 10 to 13 boats in the TP52 class and five or six in the GP42 class including the new Juan Kouyoumdjian designed boat for TEAMORIGIN nearing completion at Salthouse Boats in Auckland.

Mike Sanderson, CEO of TeamOrigin said:

“The schedule was always going to be tight but we are on time. The boat is due to leave New Zealand in the middle of March. We have it booked on a fruit ship which means it is pretty reliable because if it gets late then the fruit goes rotten.”

Current Audi MedCup champions Emirates Team New Zealand completed their modifications in-house and have been trial sailing the new configuration on the waters off Auckland in excellent conditions. Otherwise, explains CEO Grant Dalton, the only change to their winning set up is the new paint job. They will sail with exactly the same core sailing team, with the exception of the reduced crew number.

2008 Audi MedCup champions Quantum Racing, who finished overall runners-up are believed to have taken the opportunity to update their deck profile and have made a bigger winter refit. Torbjorn Tornqvist’s 2007 champions Artemis, third overall in 2009 have a busy sailing season planned and will be back to challenge hard. Alberto Roemmers’ team of Matador start training on March 19th as a build up to the Palma Vela regatta, where up to five teams will race including Artemis, Cristabella Matador and Synergy are expected to take part.

Home hopes for the opening regatta will be with Pedro Mendonça’s Bigamist who have been winter training hard off their native Cascais. Their prolonged training together was the foundations for a very successful 2009, and so on their own local waters, the Portuguese team have a good chance of starting the 2010 Audi MedCup season on a high note.

Finally, the circuit remember the fans…

An official statement from the series says:

“The new season starting in two months will not just add new teams, rules and venues, but a new effort in popularising both the Audi MedCup Circuit and the sport of sailing.”

Fernando Iñigo, Audi MedCup Circuit and World Sailing Management Marketing Director, explains:

“We are working on consolidating the TV successes we achieved in 2009, including important innovations that we will reveal soon which will revolutionise the way we communicate the sport of sailing. Apart from that, we are designing a new and more ambitious public area in order to keep on evolving our goal of making the Audi MedCup Circuit more popular. In that sense, the two new venues, Barcelona and Cascais, are key”.

Emirates Team NZ Announce Gill as Official Technical Clothing Partner.

Following the collapse of New Zealand based marine clothing supplier Line7 last year, several high profile teams have been in the market for a new official clothing sponsor, including Emirates Team New Zealand.

The NZ America’s Cup challenger has announced that the new official technical clothing supplier will be Gill. The word technical suggests that the door has been left open for a more fashion oriented brand to supply the team with off-the-water kit.

Gill, which is currently supporting the UK tri-services project; exercise Transglobe, will be supplying a range of if its technical product for both the prestigious Louis Vuitton Trophy events during 2010, and the TP52 taking part in this seasons Audi Medcup.

Emirates Team New Zealand Managing Director Grant Dalton said he is pleased to welcome Gill to the team.

“The partnership brings together Emirates Team New Zealand and Gill, an acknowledged world leader in research, development, design and production of high-performance technical sailing clothing. Gill is a brand the team is proud to wear.”

Founder and Chairman of Gill, Nick Gill commented

“we have been developing high performance technical clothing for exactly these environments and this partnership offers a great opportunity to have the gear on the water with a fabulous team which are at the absolute pinnacle of performance sailing. Our new Race Collection for example has been developed specifically for this area of the sport. In elite events such as these it is the details that make the difference between winning and losing. Our high performance garments will be exposed to the race environment which they were designed for, we trust that they will excel and hope that they may even make the difference that turns a 2nd into a 1st.”

Audi Med Cup Confirms 2010 Calendar with Barcelona and Cascais.

Now that some of the uncertainty around the America’s Cup has been replaced by a different type of uncertainty, the professionals have to amuse themselves somehow for the 2010 season. Two contenders for AC34, TEAMORIGIN and Emirates Team NZ will be going head to head in the Audi Med Cup along with several other teams with America’s Cup talent.

The Audi Med Cup series has managed to establish itself as one of the most recognisable and prestigious annual series in professional yacht racing. The series attracts the world’s best sailors and has stayed true to it’s concept, not over-reaching with events in new markets. The TP52 has shown to be a boat that can be adapted to suit the competitive nature of owners and in the absence of an AC34 rule, provides teams with a training platform to keep teams at the top of their game.

Audi MedCup organisers have announced that two of Europe’s most desirable cities, Barcelona and Cascais/Lisbon, have now been confirmed as venues for the 2010 calendar.

Nacho Postigo, Technical Manager of the Circuit said:

“ It’s realising a dream for us in many ways. We have been wanting to go to Barcelona for a long time. In sailing it is one of the most renowned Spanish venues for every sailor, and also to Cascais, where strong wind should be assured”

Cascais, in May

The Audi MedCup Circuit 2010 schedule opens with an entirely new venue. The year’s first event will take place between the 11 and the 16 of May in Cascais, Portugal.

Few cities in Europe can offer the weather conditions which the Portuguese city enjoys in spring and summer.. The reputation for strong, consistent winds was apparent when the city hosted the 2007 ISAF World Sailing Championships, and the venue is open to the Atlantic which should ensure big swells.

It could be the Estoril Circuit of sailing, potentially one of the most exciting regattas of the season, a great curtain raiser, which would have a good chance to provide images reminiscent of the ones which emerged from the big days off Cartagena, where the boats surfed spectacularly on, and through, lumpy swells several metres high.

Barcelona, in July

Barcelona will host the third event of the 2010 Audi MedCup Circuit between the 20th and the 25th of July. At this time the Catalan capital city enjoys great thermal winds of the southwest, known as Garbí.

As well as the pleasant summer weather conditions, Barcelona is the perfect showcase for the Circuit, richly endowed with the experience and infrastructure of a city which holds many sailing competitions in Spain including the 1992 Olympic Sailing Regatta. The 2010 Audi MedCup Circuit event benefits from the full participation of the city hall in the organization of the events which will ensure a lively public village while the races take place on the water. And of course as a backdrop, the major European city needs no introduction as a cultural, architectural, culinary and nightlife capital that few can rival.

Audi MedCup Circuit’s Schedule 2010:

• Event 1: Cascais (Portugal), 11th to 16th of May
• Event 2: Marseille (France), 15th to 20th of June
• Event 3: Barcelona (Spain), 20th to 25th of July
• Event 4: Cartagena (Spain), 24th to 29th of August
• Event 5: Cagliari (Italy), 20th to 25th of September

Emirates Team NZ Drop Volvo Ocean Race Plans in Hope of New Cup Attempt.

Emirates Team New Zealand boss, Grant Dalton has told NZ Media that the team will not compete in the next Volvo Ocean Race. While race organisers have said that stopovers will not necessarily be tied to competing teams, the news probably means that Auckland will not be a stopover for the next edition of the round the world race.

The Volvo Ocean Race had been seen as a platform to deliver value to the Emirates, the team’s long time sponsor in the absence of a recognisable America’s Cup campaign.  According to the most recent news,  the Volvo race has been ditched for two reasons: it was proving too expensive and was superfluous to the team’s needs. Emirates Team NZ are committed to a TP52 campaign in the Audi Med Cup and the new Louis Vuitton Trophy.

Dalton hopes that with the DOG Match now happening in Valencia, the future of Emirates Team NZ in the America’s Cup will be more certain, once a winner is determined. Notwithstanding more court cases and the lack of wind in Spain, Grant Dalton is hoping to move on. He said:

‘I don’t for a minute discount the possibility of more delays but there’s now, for the first time in a long time, light at the end of the tunnel. ‘There’s a future for the team beckoning within days really. we are still here’ and ‘ready to race again’ once ‘there’s certainty in the future of the event’.

‘Above all else that is what we want, certainty. The best result for us is for the winner [of the deed-of-gift match] to announce a Challenger of Record and say the defender will enter into dialogue with the challengers. That’s about the best result we can hope for.’

‘My focus needs to now turn to raising money and getting the team back together again. My heart is still in a Volvo but it would have been a massive distraction and the board felt we needed to change course.

Audi Med Cup Media Value Study Values Coverage at 24.9 Euros.

More Sailing media value numbers, this time from the The Audi MedCup circuit. The numbers are realistic, talking about real media value and not touting meaningless figures in the billions based on household penetration.

The series has reported that in 2009 a study by Sport + Markt as estimated the media value of the season at 24,9 million euros. The study was carried out in Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, UK and Germany. The results are a 35% improvement on 2008 despite there being one less race in 2009.

Fernando Iñigo, Marketing and Communications Director of Grupo Santa Monica Sports said:

Maintaining the impact in such circumstances would have successful enough, since we cut down the number of events in 20%, but in spite of that we’ve managed to increase the media impact in 35%”.

Iñigo’s opinion is that such success is due to the consolidation of a communication strategy maintained over time. The three year old strategy involves very good audiovisual production quality which has led to great gains in TV coverage.

The results consolidate the Audi MedCup Circuit, founded by Ignasi Triay and Nacho Postigo in 2005, as one of the most important regatta circuits of the world. The monitored countries showed a TV coverage of around 630 hours, with a monitored media impact of around 16,2 million euros measured in AVE (Advertising Value Equivalent).  The coverage was greatest in Spain followed by France, Italy, Germany, UK, Ireland and Portugal.

Press coverage was also good. 1.201 articles were measured with an estimated value of around 6,3 million euros. Once again, Spain was the country with the biggest press coverage, followed by France, Italy, Portugal, Germany, UK and Ireland.

The impact in the digital media was studied in 2009 for the first time. Value was estimated at 3,3 million euros in the six monitored countries, but the amount is not included in the global 24,9 million euro figure. Digital coverage was more than 2 million euros in Spain, and represents more than 13% of the Circuit’s global impact.

Fernando Iñigo is confident in the contined success of the communication strategy for the Audi MedCup Circuit, and expects

“the media impact to grow in 10% globally, and 30% in Italy and France. In both countries we want our presence in the media to grow, reaching a bigger media impact by doing so”

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