Gladwell's Line: Will the cat cut the mustard at the America's Cup?

8:37 AM Sat 22 Jan 2011 GMT

'Auckland (NZL) - 34th America?s Cup - AC45 sea trial n?4' Gilles Martin-Raget/www.americascup.com Click Here to view large photo

For the past few months we've been following the construction of the AC45 in Warkworth, and this week had our first glimpse of her out sailing. The quick recap is that the AC45 is a one design catamaran, designed to be a forerunner to the AC72 open design, to be used in the 34th America's Cup, replacing the monohulls that have been used for all but two of the 33 Matches sailed in the last 160 years. We've been skeptical of many of the claims made for the use of large catamarans, in the America's Cup. Particularly when those comments ...

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by Richard Gladwell