With ther next America's Cup, tentatively scheduled for February 2010 at Valencia or another venue as yet undisclosed, due to be sailed in multihulls, the defender Alinghi has announced the addition of a highly-credentialed multihull sailor to their team.
Loïck Peyron is a 50 year old Frenchman who has crossed the Atlantic 43 times; 18 single-handed. He has raced around the world twice, holds three Transat titles and two Transat Jacques Vabres.
“In every sailor's mind, the America's Cup is part of life. I have been following it for many years and now to be working for a team like Alinghi makes me proud,” Peyron said, adding: “There is a tremendous amount of work for sure, but it's a big challenge. An interesting strength of Alinghi is that it has a lot of knowledge from a lot of areas of the sport: monohulls, offshore sailing, multihulls; especially here in Switzerland. The way the team works is based on team spirit and the method works really well; they have proved it many times. Now like everybody here, I am impatient to go and sail on the lake to see the potential of this amazing machine.”
Brad Butterworth, Alinghi team skipper and four-time America's Cup winner welcomes Peyron: “We are looking forward to working with Loïck; he brings a lot of multihull experience – from both a design and sailing point of view – to a team that already has quite a bit of depth in this area of our sport. I think he will be an asset to this project and a good addition to the team.”
Peyron's sailing career highlights include:
43 Atlantic crossings; 18 single-handed
2 Round the Worlds
3 Transat 'Anglaise' wins, single-handed
2 Transat Jacques Vabre wins
2 Bol d'Or wins
