Sir Thomas Lipton challenged five times between 1899 and 1930. All he won was a “loveable loser” award for his sportsmanship from the citizens of New York.

Just two and a half weeks ago, Peter Gilmour’s OneWorld Challenge was eliminated in the semi final repechage round of Louis Vuitton Cup 2003. It was Gilmour’s fifth syndicate without realising the pinnacle of sailing.

Swiss pharmaceutical billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli and American software billionaire Larry Ellison are aiming to fix that rule of thumb. The two first-time challengers square off in the best-of-nine Louis Vuitton Cup Final beginning tomorrow.

The winner gets one step closer to winning the Cup: A date with Team New Zealand in the 31st Cup Match beginning Feb. 15.

Both Alinghi, 21-3, and Oracle BMW Racing, 20-8, will sail their familiar SUI-64 and USA-76, respectively, in the finals.

The teams are two of the biggest-budgeted, largest-staffed in the challenger field, yet they arrived in the Louis Vuitton Cup having travelled disparate paths.

Alinghi took the road less travelled. Make that hardly travelled. In the unique Louis Vuitton Cup format, which favoured the top-ranked team by demanding less racing of it, a minimum of 24 races were required to advance.

Forget the minimum. The Russell Coutts-skippered Alinghi Team has sailed just 22 races. It sat out the final race of the round robins when it was assured of gaining the No. 1 seed and, therefore, the right to choose its opponent in the quarterfinals.

Racing Prada in the quarters, Alinghi won 4-0 but again didn’t sail the last race. Prada withdrew after three races to begin another round of modifications for the quarter finals repechage round.

Alinghi then defeated Oracle BMW Racing 4-0 in the semi finals. It was just the second round Alinghi had sailed, other than the first round robin, in which it completed all its scheduled races.

“Bertarelli’s had the easiest regatta in the world,” said Bill Trenkle, a veteran of nine Cup campaigns with Dennis Conner. “They’ve been on cruise control. ‘Oh, well, we’re not going to sail that last race, buy ourselves some more time.’ Nobody’s had a more relaxed regatta than them.”

Oracle BMW Racing’s regatta started out rocky but settled down in the second round. The team from San Francisco, Calif., finished the first round robin with a 5-3 record, but showed some flaws, particularly downwind.

After a disastrous loss to Prada at the start of the second round, when a brutal windshift catapulted Prada ahead of Oracle BMW after it had been leading handily, syndicate chief Ellison recalled Chris Dickson and gave him full control of the syndicate.

Oracle BMW Racing promptly took off on an 11-race winning streak, one that carried it through to the semi finals where it ran into the form of a brick wall in Alinghi.

“They’re a good team. I’m sure we’ll see them again in the future,” Coutts said after the series.

How prophetic he was. Coutts said he has great respect for Dickson. “I think Chris is a very determined sailor,” Coutts said. “He’s proven his skill over the years. He made an impact coming into Oracle, no one can argue that.”

Dickson was less effusive about Coutts. He acknowledged that Coutts and his posse of Brad Butterworth, Murray Jones, Simon Daubney and Warwick Fleury have won the last two America’s Cup Matches, but little else.

“We have a lot of respect for their team,” Dickson said. “We’re under no illusions as to whom and what we’re up against.”

They’re up against a wall. Oracle BMW’s four losses in the semi final round are the only ones the team has suffered in 15 matches under Dickson’s stewardship.

Overall, Alinghi has beaten Oracle BMW Racing in five of six matches, winning by an average of 59.4 seconds. In 99 nautical miles raced, Alinghi has gained a total of 7 minutes, 13 seconds on the racecourse compared to Oracle BMW’s gains of 2 minutes, 26 seconds.

That means Oracle BMW has to gain of nearly 3 seconds per mile to avoid another shutout. Dickson said that they have.

“The sail number of the boat were using is same, but after that the similarities disappear quickly,” said Dickson. “The boat is significantly different. We’ve found boatspeed in a lot of different areas and I don’t think we’ve comprised any other areas to get it.”

There’s little doubt that Alinghi has continued to improve as well. Design coordinator Grant Simmer said that since they launched SUI-64 in May 2001, they’ve improved its speed by one and a half minutes, with 20 to 30 seconds of that improvement coming in the last three months since the start of the Louis Vuitton Cup.

Alinghi will enter the start box for the first race on port tack while Oracle BMW Racing, which will be started by Peter Holmberg, will enter on starboard tack.

Source: Sean McNeill