Geneva welcomes the Little Cup
by Thibault Tallieu 8 Sep 2015 20:28 BST
12-20 September 2015
With just four days to go before the starting shot of the 27th Little Cup is fired, the teams are busy with the final preparations, inspections and training sessions and the Little Cup Village is getting ready to open its doors to the general public, offering visitors the unique opportunity to plunge into the universe of flying catamarans.
Here's a review of the press conference which has just been held at the Société Nautique de Genève.
Technological sailing's elite
This is a world first for both Geneva and the Lake, hosting the Little Cup in Port Noir from 12th to 20th September 2015. For the first time since it was created in 1961, the competition
is being held on a lake. This year's line-up comprises 7 top notch international teams specialising in flying boats: the French team Groupama Sailing Team, the Swiss teams Team Gstaad Yacht Club, Axon Racing and Norgador, the American team Cogito 2015, the German team Sentient Blue and the Canadian Rafale – ETS, the first student team to rise to the challenge of the Little Cup.
The racing programme
A compulsory training session is to be held on Sunday 13th. The qualifying rounds will take
the form of fleet races from Monday 14th to Thurday 17th. The two winning teams qualify for
the final "match races" on Friday 18th and Saturday 19th (according to wind conditions). There
are 3 possible zones where the course can be set: in front of the SNG, in Versoix or in
Hermance.
A village on the Little Cup theme
A Little Cup Village built around the SNG will welcome visitors throughout the event. The
public will be able to access the facilities freely and follow the racing live from the water's edge, or via the social networks. The paddocks where the team prepare their boats can also be visited. The aim is for the village to be both fun and informative, with two exhibitions telling the history of foils and the most important sailing evolutions on Lake Geneva.
Thanks to this new format which opens up the event in making it accessible to the general public, the Little Cup – organised by the Hydros Foundation, a public-interest organisation
from Geneva – demonstrates its truly international dimension in showing how leading technology can be applied to nautical and maritime energy efficiency.
www.littlecup.org