Alinghi remains undefeated at the top of the leader board coming into the last day of racing for Act 4, claiming 10 wins from ten races.

Alinghi Vs Emirates Team New Zealand

Alinghi came home from the southern course victorious again – the Defender fought hard on the start line, dominating Emirates Team New Zealand they bagged the race shortly after the pre-start. Alinghi extended their lead to a convincing seven boat lengths for the rest of the race to beat the kiwi team by 36 seconds over the line.

Alinghi Vs K-Challenge

Later for match 6 of flight 10, Alinghi met the French team K-Challenge, fought them off and sailed away from them to lead over the finish line by an even more convincing 1.22 minutes.

Quotes from the winning boat, SUI75

Dean Phipps, Alinghi runner/pit comments on the day’s victory against ETNZ: “It’s been sweet, we’ve only just realized what we have won – on the way in we saw BMW beat Luna Rossa and realized that we can relax a little bit. But you know, the goal is to win races and that’s what we intend to do, that’s what we came here for, so we’re going to go ahead tomorrow and win. To come away with a full set of wins would be a nice one for us!”

A beer tonight?

“We’ll definitely have a few beers tonight – but the big picture is still to do well and improve our team, we’re still a little bit rusty around some of the corners, we’ve got a lot to work on, so we’ll take the positive things out of this and we’ll also take a look at the negatives and the crew work that came through this week and try to improve on that so we’ll keep knocking away at all the little bits we need to improve on.”

The competition?

“The boats are all in different modes some with long bulbs, some with short ones, ETNZ have dropped the hula, chopped the bow off and raised the stern, so we are also evaluating their performance compared to what we know about them from the last Cup – it’s just a big learning curve for all of us at the moment. We’re happy with the boat and we’re going to keep vamping it up, because boat speed wins the America’s Cup and that’s what we’re trying to do!”

Alinghi is going to throw a spontaneous party tomorrow night to celebrate many wins during Act 4 – this will bring together the entire Alinghi family, a community of nearly 300 people – so if you hear music to rival the rhythms of the Shosholoza base – you’ll know what’s going on!

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