Team Tilt defines its 2017 Red Bull Youth America’s Cup campaign

by Team Tilt Sailing on 14 Sep 2016 The second edition of the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup is scheduled for June 2017 in Bermuda, home to the 35th America’s Cup. Switzerland’s Team Tilt has the event in its sights and has been preparing for it for several months.

The Swiss youth squad scored an impressive fourth place at the inaugural event in San Francisco in 2013 and plans to improve on this result. The team began a national selection process last spring, receiving 33 applications, of which 16 athletes reached the interview stage. Twelve of these passed the first selection and have been training hard throughout the summer to achieve the objectives set. After an intense two-week session on the Decision 35, the selection committee has now made a final choice of eight athletes and training towards the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup can begin! Organised in parallel to the America’s Cup event in Bermuda, the Youth America’s Cup is exclusive to under 25s and attracts some of the most promising young sailors in the world.

Team Tilt has been active across a number of sailing disciplines this year with Sebastien Schneiter and Lucien Cujean representing Switzerland at the Olympic Games in Rio, finishing an impressive 13th in the 49er Class. In Europe, the team is in third place on the D35 Trophy season ranking and second on the GC32 Racing Tour. Both the D35 and the GC32 will be used as training platforms in the short and medium term to prepare the squad for the flying (foiling) AC45s that the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup will be raced on. To give the team the best possible preparation, Team Tilt partnered with Emirates Team New Zealand, the America’s Cup team representing New Zealand, at the start of the year and has received advice from their famous skipper, Glenn Ashby, throughout this year’s racing.

Fresh from Rio, D35 skipper, Sebastien Schneiter sailed with the candidates for the final selection phase and those that have been chosen will continue to sail on the catamaran for the remaining two Grand Prix events of the D35 Trophy season. They will then move over to the GC32 foiling multihull to train in October – the training programme will be finalised in the coming weeks, but it promises to be intense and in salt water for optimal performance preparation!

Team Tilt has not yet been selected to race the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup; Roman Hagara and Hans-Peter Steinacher, the Double-Olympic medallists in charge of the event, will visit the team this autumn to analyse the squad’s ability. They will give their verdict by the end of 2016.