ague

Funny that LV is replaced by Prada as they are roughly in the same space. After the "throw the LV stuff away like plastic bags" show in Bermuda, that was to be expected. Could be interresting if Bernard Arnaut, the big boss of LVMH, was looking at this as a personnal challenge. He's got the funds and knows how to get something when really he wants it! EDIT: Well, thinking about it, he might end up buying Prada to solve the problem.

Bob, its clear to everyone. Please stop the running gag It is time to switch the lights off this topic: It is clear both De Nora and GTF fucked up their communication. IMHO, nothing else here is worth consuming Internet and Server ressources and damaging even more this planet.

De Nora definitely has an agenda that goes beyond the AC / Sailing. This is the only thing that can explain going off tracks like this unless the Newspaper did this on their own. I also think that depending on the Defender decisions, we will see how other teams (and not only GTF or the London 5) react. Hopefully, we will get all this happy crowd on the water ASAP...

This is precisely what the French version of the press release says. So the conclusion so far is : "the GTF press guys suck when it comes to English translations"

Well, that article is even more obvious of the agenda behind that story : let's blame the French (and not GTF btw) as an enemy and be proud we won with hairdryers. So sad. Someone to remind them it is sport and not war between nations?

Wouldn't the main issue come from building: foils (if any ) fancy bespoke spars as most of the other components can be made virtually anywhere now? I would disagree with Japan and Swedish being out (Japan is pretty good with composite, I believe they do helo's blades and the Swedish have Marstrom) where I doubt that beyond hulls, Uk would be that advanced?

Forgive me if this has already been said but I just read a French version of the GTF release here : http://sport24.lefigaro.fr/voile/coupe-de-l-america/fil-info/la-reponse-du-defi-francais-aux-neo-zelandais-867963 There is a big difference between the English and French versions. Here it says : Which, to me, means : We were still sailing after being eliminated in order to train in perspective of the 36th America's cup. Consequently, given the fact that we had no spares, we needed a boat and all its parts and constituing elements. In other words, and if we buy this story, they could not have sailed anymore if they had given away the parts asked for by ETNZ. The English version was stating the spares thing but not suggesting they would have been out of sailing.

Well, given the little we know from what happened, it is difficult to have an opinion and all the dicussion above illustrate that. For me the point is not what (technically speaking) led to this situation. What I really find unelegant (if not dangerous) is the way De Nora is leveraging this story in the "look how NZers won this race against the Amlericans the French all odds". Having a country be proud of such an achievement is great. Introducing a parallel story to enforce some sort of nationalism is a problem to me.I dont know much about the guy but I would not be surprised if de Nora was into politics in NZ? I look forward to get a bit more first hand info about this story.

This is bullshit: when you fuck up pitch pole, I don't think you should blame anyone else on the consequences why he is blaming on GTF and not on other teams? the GTF reaction, if you look at the big picture, make quite a bit of sense: why supporting a team that is willing to change the boat/rules for the next edition when you came to learn and just secured sponsorship for the next edition? just some anti-French bitterness leveraged to have this (great) victory benefit for nationalistic echo in NZ? This is sport guys, don't try to mimic Orange Donald there.

I heard something around 150k€

Could not agree more, Tornado-Cat. It is even more ridiculous considering that almost all terms used in those videos have a pretty straight forward translation in French...

He won't have an excuse not to cross the line shaved and with clean laundry

This race was really competitive, and especially thanks to AT's performance. Congrats to ALC, this is well deserved! Considering that the next edition will be in 2020(/1), the VG org should now consider another approach to deliver live information feed. They have gone a long way with the website in the last editions but when I recently heard an interview with the VG-whatever-something director, I felt the bloke was stuck back in the 90s. I don't think they realised yet that there is a great opportunity to bring international sponsors into play. With all due respect to the local county/region and sandwich makers, they now need to open to international sponsors and provide English and non EU timezones quality feeds. The virtual race result speak for themselves in terms of geo exposure!

I am not a specialist in aviation but someone might want to warn them there is a blinking red light on the plane's dashboard just at the beginning of the video

Thanks for the links, very informative. This interview, particularly the comments about AT: "Il laisse les mecs de Port-La-F’ se regarder, se marquer autant dans la manière de concevoir des bateaux que de naviguer, de gérer la course…" and "Il ne fait pas le « Championnat du monde de Port-La-Forêt » !" will probably need to be considered as a wakeup call by the guys in Port la Foret. Funny way to consider they mark each other even in the boat design department. They certainly underestimated AT long before the race started. Josse had also (maybe) a different perspective but you can never be proven right when you get DNF in front of you name on the leaderboard...