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The America's Cup regatta. What's it all about?

Racing starts with a Round Robin format, where all teams race against each other. Those with the most points move forward to the semi-finals and then the finals. The new format allows second lives to some teams and is believed to be a better way to strengthen the top contenders and give the ultimate challenger more time to get ready for the America's Cup challenge.

The winner of the Louis Vuitton Cup goes on to challenge Team New Zealand on 15 February 2003 in the best of nine races for the America's Cup.

The America's Cup regatta consists of two parts; The Louis Vuitton Cup, a four month elimination series to determine the cup Challenger, and the America's Cup, where Challenger and Defender race one-on-one in a best of nine match.

	The Louis Vuitton Cup
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Louis Vuitton Cup

Racing for the Louis Vuitton Cup started on October 1, 2002. Like the America's Cup, the Louis Vuitton Cup is a one-on-one racing series, and for 2003 a new and complicated formula introduced.

The series starts with two round robins involving all of the Challengers, where each win is worth one point. At the end of the rounds, the top eight teams are seeded and the rest eliminated.

In the quarter-finals, these eight teams are divided into two groups - the top four in the double chance pool, the bottom four in the single chance. The top seeds in each pool will then choose their opponent for a best of seven race-off.

The two winners in the double chance group go straight to the semi-finals, while the losers race the winners from the single chance pool in a repechage.

The semi-finals, which took place in December 2002, pit the top two qualifiers against each other, with the winner advancing to the Louis Vuitton Cup final. The loser has a repechage against the winner of the third-fourth seed sail-off.

The Louis Vuitton final took place in January 2003, and follows the same format as the America's Cup.

America's Cup

For the 2003 challenge, a myriad of large corporate sponsors lined up behind the Challengers, investing over US$350 million to wrestle the Cup from Team New Zealand. The big spenders Oracle, Prada and Alinghi are all spending over US$60 million on their campaigns. Team New Zealand are reputed to be spending more than double the 2000 campaign budget but this is thought to be as much as half what some of the challengers have spent.

All the Louis Vuitton and America's Cup races take place out on Auckland's Hauraki Gulf, with each course around 16km (10 miles) from the syndicate bases at the American Express Viaduct Harbour in downtown Auckland. As with many high profile events throughout the world, tight security will be in place.

On each America's Cup Class yacht there is a total of 16 crew, plus the seventeenth man. The crew consists of a navigator, tactician, helmsman/skipper, traveller trimmer, mainsail trimmer, spinnaker/Genoa trimmer, runner trimmer, grinders, pitman, mastman, midbowman and bowman. The seventeenth man is a guest that cannot participate in any way - they are simply along for the ride.

The rules of the America's Cup are set down in the 1887 Deed of Gift, the current Protocol, the International America's Cup Class Rule and the Match Conditions.