Umpires under pressure ahead of America's Cup

Keeping pace with the high-performance America's Cup boats is likely to be a big challenge for the race umpires, who could struggle to keep up with the multihulls contesting this edition of the sailing classic.

Alinghi and BMW Oracle are set to sail their best-of-three match series from tomorrow night (NZ time), and the state-of-the-art boats are expected to run three times faster than the wind speed.

That could leave the boats out of sight of the race committee at key moments, such as when they reach the first marker 20 miles off the Valencia coast in international waters.

"You'll be out of sight in five minutes. On a clear day you can lose the boats pretty quickly," Alinghi skipper Brad Butterworth said today (NZ time) from the Swiss team's base. "(The umpires) don't know what they're in for."

The Mediterranean coast line will disappear from the horizon and wind conditions will vary at sea. Butterworth likened the chances of having the right weather conditions "to going to a casino."

"We didn't want to come here in Northern hemisphere winter," Butterworth said. "But somebody's got to be responsible."

Butterworth said that insurance liabilities will force the race to be called off if the windspeed exceeds 15 knots or waves more than 3-feet. That means there could even be stoppages mid-match, although even making that call is tricky since the two boats will be sailing miles apart up the 400-square mile course and in likely different weather patterns.

BMW Oracle chief executive Russell Coutts, a three-time America's Cup winner, expects the four-member committee to make a fair assessment even if it is appointed by the Societe Nautique Geneve, Alinghi's home yacht club.

"I've got a tremendous amount of confidence in (principal race officer) Harold Bennett determining the conditions we're going to race in," Coutts said. "It's pretty clear, I don't think Harold Bennett will be influenced by the pressures that may have been applied earlier. I expect to see him run a very fair race in the right conditions."

Both sides know a fast boat is key and are enjoying sailing these extreme, state-of-the-art designs.

"In breeze, it's terrifying," BMW Oracle president and navigator Larry Ellison told the Associated Press when asked to describe what it's like being at the wheel. "It's very exciting, the power of these things, to feel these things accelerate is absolutely extraordinary.

"The fact is they fly, all three hulls come out of the water. Your mind doesn't wander and drift and think about other things. You pay absolute attention."

- AP