Beating Prada Is Real Challenge

The only way to beat Prada may be to hide the course marks. Seriously.

The Italians have lost only once in 17 races as the second round of the challenger trials for the America’s Cup winds down this week, and that was in a race against Dennis Conner’s Stars & Stripes, when a squall cut visibility to 100 yards.

“The MVP was our navigator, Peter Isler,” Stars & Stripes helmsman Ken Read said.

The boats sail three laps for a total of 18 miles around a course defined by highly visible inflated buoys anchored three miles apart--one directly upwind, the other downwind. Usually, an America’s Cup navigator’s job is to process information relating to the other boat’s position. Rarely does he actually have to navigate, as did Magellan.

“As the rain started coming down, I grabbed the binoculars [and] took a quick peek on the position of the buoy still a couple of miles away,” Isler said. “Then the rain came [and] we were in our own little world--a navigator’s nightmare. I had a pretty good compass bearing right before the rain came, so I just employed good ol’ mental piloting using the compass.

“The Italian navigator [Matteo Plazzi] must not have seen the buoy because they started turning to the right, away from where I thought the mark was. A few minutes later [tactician] Tom Whidden called out, ‘There’s the mark,’ just a little bit off the port bow. By the time we dropped the spinnaker and rounded, we had a nice lead.”

Stars & Stripes, recently reinforced when Whidden reenlisted for his seventh campaign with Conner, went on to win by 1 minute 51 seconds, highlighting a run of six victories in seven races. But the Italians haven’t let any other races slip away.

Other teams are lucky if they have sponsors. Prada doesn’t need any. Prada sells clothes--expensive clothes. If you ever bought one of Prada’s dresses, you have a stake in their campaign. It is fully funded by the Milan high-fashion house run by the campaign’s boss, Patrizio Bertelli.

The team has everything money can buy, most important, two new boats designed by Doug Peterson, the former San Diegan who helped create the last two winners, for New Zealand in 1995 and Bill Koch’s America3 in ’92.

The only question coming in was how well the Italians would sail them. The only non-Italian on board is tactician Torben Grael, a Brazilian and former Star class Olympic and world champion. The skipper is Francesco de Angelis, also a world champion but, like Grael, inexperienced in the match-racing skills peculiar to the America’s Cup.

That’s why Bertelli brought in Rod Davis, an American expatriate from San Diego living in New Zealand. Davis, a two-time Olympic medalist and four-time winner of the Congressional Cup match-racing classic at Long Beach, taught De Angelis and Grael everything he knows. It took two years.

“Francesco and Torben were very good sailors but dreadful match racers,” Davis said. “Francesco isn’t especially aggressive, which is probably a spinoff on my style, but he’s certainly not intimidated by anybody out there. I don’t see match racing as a weak point for this team any longer. The boys know how to brawl if they have to.”

Prada’s shore compound sits at the outer end of Syndicate Row on Auckland’s waterfront. Twice a day, coming and going, the other boats must pass close by under the presence of Prada’s twin vessels, propped high and daunting in their cradles.

Davis, now a veteran of eight America’s Cups with four countries, said before the competition started, “We are more ready than I’ve ever been.”

Not much has happened to change his mind.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Current Standings

Incomplete second of three rounds:

1. Prada, 17 wins, 1 loss, 38 points; 2. America True, 11-6, 26; 3. Team Dennis Conner, 10-7, 24.5; 4. tie, AmericaOne, 12-4, and Young America, 12-5, 24; 6. Nippon, 9-7, 17.5; 7. Spain, 7-9, 13; 8. Abracadabra, 6-11, 12; 9. France, 4-13, 10; 10. Switzerland, 2-15, 8; 11. Young Australia, 2-14, 5.