Prada Announce Challenge for Americas Cup 2002-2003

YACHT CLUB PUNTA ALA AS CHALLENGER OF RECORD FOR THE NEXT AMERICA'S CUP TO BE RACED IN 2002-2003

At the end of the officail prize-giving ceremony for Team New Zealand, winner of the 30th Match for the America's Cup, Patrizio Bertelli announced today to the Media his participation to the next America's Cup on behalf of Yacht Club Punta Ala as Challenger of Record.

Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron commodore Peter Kingston received a challenge from Yacht Club Punta Ala commodore Bruno Calandriello as New Zealand NZL 60 crossed the finish line to win the last race of the America's Cup 2000 match in the Hauraki Gulf today.

The two yacht clubs have already agreed a Protocol for the XXXI edition of the America's Cup, which will be raced through the New Zealand summer of 2002/3.

At the end of the day Patrizio Bertelli said: "During this America's Cup we learned that you need to win the races and that you have to understand the reasons why, instead, you lose. In the next few days we will start planning our future. We know that there will not be much time to get ready for the next America's Cup and we will begin to work very soon again. The event which ended today started for our team just over two years ago when we put together the design team. During all this time we have been working in a reserved way, until we moved to New Zealand to start racing. Here we have been through a very long series of races starting with the Round Robins, Semi-finals and the Finals, and sometimes we lost the primary objective, the final goal - to win the America's Cup. For certain we will make some changes to the racing format of the next challemger selection series". Francesco de Angelis said: "It is very difficult to talk about the outcome of this challenge just after you have stepped off the boat. I think we will have time in the next few days to analise the work we have done. In any case, this was a great experience for all of us. We begun from zero two years ago and we have been able to beat challengers who have been involved in the America's Cup four or five times already. We have gained an enormous amount of experience which will be of fundamental importance in the future. Let me congratulate Russell and Team New Zealand for the work that they have done. They did a great job on the water and preparing of the water and all the work that they did on developing all the technical work that was done in those four years. It was a well deserved win and we were happy to have had the opportunity to race against them and that will give us a long list to work for in the future."

More Information: www.Prada-americascup.com

Official Suppliers: Technogym (The Wellness Company), Sanpellegrino (mineral waters and beverages), Enervit (food supplements), Saima Avandero (transport), Makita (power tools), Fabianelli (pasta). Official Technology Partners: CEI - Computational Engineering International (engineering visualization software), ICEM-CFD Engineering (mesh generation software), SGI (computer systems), PTC (engineering design and analysis software), Engineous Software Inc. (Engineering Software Automation Optimization), INSEAN (Tank Testing) - Istituto Nazionale per Studi ed Esperienze di Architettura Navale).