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Orient Express Racing Team ready for challenge of the final America's Cup Preliminary Regatta

by Orient Express Racing Team 20 Aug 13:39 BST 22-25 August 2024
Orient Express Racing Team © Alexander Champy-McLean / Orient Express Racing Team

France's Orient Express Racing Team is all systems go to make the most of this week's Preliminary Regatta, their final opportunity to test themselves against the other challenger teams before the Louis Vuitton 37th America's Cup Barcelona gets under way in earnest at the end of the month.

The third and last Preliminary Regatta from Thursday 22 to Sunday 25 August, is the first official occasion that Orient Express Racing Team, the French challenger, has had to race against the AC75s of the other national campaigns, following recent informal practice days.

While the results do not count towards the outcome of the America's Cup, the four days of racing offer an invaluable window for the French race crew to hone their skills and fine tune their performance.

And they will be straight into the action, paired in the very first match race against the Swiss Alinghi Red Bull Racing team — who they will also face in their first Louis Vuitton Cup Round Robin race on 29 August.

"We're looking at these preliminaries as a fantastic opportunity to perfect our preparation," said Thierry Douillard, coach for Orient Express Racing Team.

"Training on our own, which we did in June and July, was essential to learn this complex boat that is the AC75.These regattas will enable us to refine our skills, particularly in the pre-start phase. This stage is quite tricky.You have to stay within a tight perimeter for 2 minutes before the start with an opponent who is going to try to put us under pressure or make us make mistakes and, at the same time, we know that we have to be careful with our energy.

"The sailors will have the opportunity to rediscover their racing instincts. There's no better training to ensure that we're ready to go on 29 August."

After the weeks, months and thousands of hours spent preparing the second generation AC75, and training the race crew and shore teams to operate the complex systems, this week's Preliminary Regatta is a major step and will potentially provide the first clues to the relative performance of each team.

"Since her launch on 6 June, the main focus has been on understanding the boat as a whole and her reliability," said Douillard.

"Mechatronics, electronics, hydraulics and PLC code are all complex areas that have had to be understood and mastered. We've gone through stages of progress, stagnation and major difficulties. Orient Express Racing Team is a young and small team, but it has a lot of momentum and energy. The progression curve since the start has been incredible."

Another key factor to manage is the source of energy on board the AC75. While the energy needed to operate the appendages — foils and rudder — comes from batteries, the energy needed to rotate the mast or adjust the sails is supplied by power cyclors, aka V8s, the sailors who pedal to deliver the necessary power.

Douillard explains: "Once again, this requires a huge amount of cohesion between different departments, the engineers, the cyclors and the sailors in the forward cell, who have to adapt their strategy according to the energy they have at their disposal.

"Our V8s deliver everything they need to, and the sailors have to find the best trajectory to achieve their goals, while avoiding energy-hungry manoeuvres, because of course it's not as easy as with a battery pack!"

At the heart of this process out on the water is Quentin Delapierre, skipper and pilot of the AC75. Around him is a tried and tested crew consisting of Kevin Peponnet (pilot), Jason Saunders (trimmer), Matthieu Vandamme (trimmer), Timothé Lapauw and Olivier Herlédant (cyclors), a team forged and tested on the SailGP circuit.

Added to this is a group of additional cyclor talent from different disciplines — rowing, crossfit and track cycling — in the shape of Antoine Nougarède, Germain Chardin, Maxime Guyon, François Pervis, and brothers Rémi and Thibaut Verhoeven.

Quentin Delapierre: "With our AC75 Orient Express Racing Team, we have incredible potential. It's up to us, the crew, not to concede a single metre, not to make any mistakes and to be consistent.

"Our mantra for staying on our positive progression curve: simplicity, efficiency, reproduction of processes, and not focusing on the result. That's what we try to apply to every training session. That's what we're going to try to reproduce during this week's preliminary regatta so that we're ready to go on 29 August when the Round Robins begin.

"Since the launch of the team on 2 February 2023, when the support of the Accor group and its Orient Express and All.Com brands was announced, the 120 members of the team led by Stephan Kandler and Bruno Dubois have come an incredible distance. Now it's up to us to make the most of it on the water."

The Preliminary Regatta marks the final call ahead of the Louis Vuitton Cup and the Louis Vuitton 37th America's Cup Barcelona — it is all about to get real.

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