Francesco de Angelis statements on AC Protest

by Luna Rossa Media on 22 Mar 2007 Yesterday night the Jury rejected the protest presented by Luna Rossa accepting instead BMW Oracle’s and awarded one point as redress to the Americans who win the Petit Final 2-0.

Luna Rossa finishes the Louis Vuitton Act 12 in fourth position.

This morning skipper Francesco de Angelis met with the journalists at the Team’s base.

Following are some of his statements.

'For me what happened yesterday was a typical match race situation with the boat on the right protecting the right and the one on the left trying to take the right. There have been many similar episodes in the past, there were many yesterday and there will be more in the future.

The fact that we were penalized is not the key factor and I am not going to debate the decision of the umpires or of the Jury. I fully respect the decision of the Jury

The key factor for me is that the collision could have been avoided by BMW Oracle. In my opinion it could have been avoided by following the directions of the bowman. All you need to do is watch the footage for yourself.

I believe that in that kind of situation you can put a penalty on your opponent without provoking a collision, which is what the Rules book says. Statistically it is the first time a collision of that entity has occurred and that’s why I believe it could have been avoided.

The umpires agreed that we could not continue to race with the damage sustained. I am no technician but I think we will need at least one week to carry out the repairs. One week without being able to sail on the new boat.

I am not going to allow one episode change what we are doing and what we will do in the future. In the Round Robin we finished second and the race against Alinghi was very valuable. It’s a shame we couldn’t conclude the race with BMW Oracle because I was happy about the way things were going.

This has been a very important period for us. We learned a lot of things about ourselves, the boat, the team and our opponents. We have our program and we are moving ahead. Our goal in these act was to race the new boat and to learn about our opponent. Next year we will have two version 5 boats and we will have the option of choosing.

Yesterday was a very tight day of racing similar to what we will see next year. The level is evolving so much that America’s Cup Class boats are handled as a dinghies pushing the limit and getting better and better.'