Chatting with the giants pt2

A pre-Colorcraft Gold Cup conversation with Victory Challenge's Magnus Holmberg and OneWorld's Peter Gilmour

Continued from yesterday's article
Q. So the match racing on the Tour, obviously with equal boats and equal boat speed is one element, but in the intramural match racing that you've been doing, is there significant differences in speed between boats? Does that affect your preparation for the match racing game?

MAGNUS HOLMBERG: I don't know, I mean, it's only one small part that we do the match racing. We have a lot of other tests and things that we do. I mean, of course the tighter matches, the more even boat speed, the betterpractice it is on the match racing element it is, of course. I guess that's the answer to that.

Q. I wanted to ask Peter about his crew, who he has got at this event and what their strengths are on this particular boat?

PETER GILMOUR: For this event, as you know I'll be sailing with the support and sponsorship of the Pizza La sailing team. I have Yasuhiru Yagi and Katsu Wakanaga and Morgan Larsen sailing with me. Yagi is mainsheet trimmer, he's pretty good at pulling the main sheet and he also has a very keen eye for picking the wind puffs and gusts, and he's great at doing that.

Katsu is very good at trimming and he spends his time standing inside the bottom of the boat, trimming both genoa and spinnaker. And Morgan is sailing on the bow, and as you know Morgan is a very accomplished match racer in his own right. So I'm looking forward to utilizing his 49er skills together with his helming and tactician skills as he works away on the bow there. It will be great to see him in action.

Q. Peter, about your crew, the last few years you've had all Japanese guys on your team, this year you've had Yagi and Katsu, but you've been bringing other guys like Ben Ainslie and now Morgan Larsen. Is this part of training these guys on how you think about match racing in preparation for the America's Cup?

PG: Absolutely. It really is. One of the big shortcomings that I felt, coming out of the 2000 America's Cup is that, you know, really needed to start with more skippers, tacticians and strategists. We have tremendous depth and talent within OneWorld Challenge with our people that have won the America's Cup, that have been there at a very high level. You know, both they and I would like to surround ourselves with each other, so to speak. Yeah, it's a great opportunity, and the match race circuit is an excellent place to try and mix that up a little bit while maintaining a focus on obviously doing well all the time Q. Peter you have sailed for the America’s cup for Australia, Japan and now America. Going over to the American side, how does that present to your run at the America's Cup and how does it position you overall in the match racing circuit, more specifically the Gold Cup?