French Team withdraw from Admirals Cup

French withdraw from series

Kandler will not accept new Rating

United States morale high after weekend win

The entire French team has withdrawn from the 1999 Champagne Mumm Admiral's Cup after Stefan Kandler, owner of their Big Boat Krazy K-Yote Two, failed to persuade the International Jury to re-instate the boat's original rating certificate and refused, instead, to accept a theoretically assessed rating for the boat calculated by Nicola Sironi, Chief Measurer of the Offshore Racing Council. The Jury had earlier endorsed the Chief Measurer's action in ordering the withdrawing of Krazy-K-Yote Two's rating certificate on the grounds that the innovative aerofoil mast could not be fairly rated by the existing rule. They had also confirmed the Chief Measurer's right to calculate an independent rating for the boat.

Acknowledging the Jury's support for the ORC position, Stefan Kandler nonetheless maintained that his boat was being unfairly victimised, and withdrew. 'A penalty against one of our boats is a penalty against the entire team' said Jean-Louis Fabry, whose Mumm 36 Bloo is the French small boat - and he and Bernard Moreau, owner of the French Sydney 40, also and reluctantly withdrew their boats.

David Minords, General Manager of the Royal Ocean Racing Club, and Gerard de Ayala, who since 1977 has represented Champagne Mumm's interests as long-serving sponsors of the series, made no secret of their 'very profound dismay' at the turn events had taken.

'It is a great disappointment indeed' said Minords. 'RORC and Champagne Mumm have in the past two years worked extremely hard both to re-structure the event and in particular to have a French team here. For this to happen now is very painful to us.' The French have not been represented in Cowes since 1993 when, ironically, they won the Cup.

While the departure of the French remains a disappointment, the remaining eight teams were last night concentrating their efforts on final preparations for tomorrow's first two races. In warm evening sunshine International Sailing Federation president Paul Henderson was among the principal guests on the lawn of the Royal Yacht Squadron at the traditional opening ceremony and reception of the bi-ennial series, and declined to be drawn on who he thought would win. Observers are agreed that of the eight teams in the event at least five are clearly capable of winning, while the vagaries of offshore yacht racing rule out no one who is close to the pace. USA, the defending champions, were confident but not complacent after their morale-boosting performance in the weekend's Berthon Source regatta at Lymington, in the Western Solent. The three-day series is used as a warm-up by most teams, and US boat took two of the three Champagne Mumm Admiral's Cup classes. George David's 50-foot Nelson/Marek sloop Idler from Hartford, CT, won the big boat class, as did Matt Whitaker's Mumm 36 Ciao Baby, from Houston, TX, racing in the small boat class. Bob Towse's Sydney 40 Blue Yankee Pride, from Stamford, CT, finished sixth in the middle-sized boat class after steadily improving all weekend.

Using Champagne Mumm Admiral's Cup scoring, the US team had 60 points, the Europe team was second with 81 points and the Italian team was third with 82 points, making the US a clear winner on the low-point scoring system.

But that was yesterday. Tomorrow, the racing starts in earnest.