9:00 AM Fri 17 Jul 2009 GMT
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'Loick onboard Gitana Eighty - Lo?ck Peyron / Gitana SA - The Artemis Transat'
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Alinghi, Defender of the 33rd America's Cup, welcomes one of the world's most renowned multihull sailors to the team for this campaign: Lo?ck Peyron.
The 50 year old Frenchman 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 Lo?ck; 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.'
Sailing career highlights
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
by Daphne Morgan-Barnicoat
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