MEDIA STATEMENT -- Valencia Plan, Summary

You will find the materials issued today at the joint press conference with ACM posted on their official website, www.americascup.com. Especially worthwhile are the good graphics (including scoresheets) produced by ACM's Marcus Hutchinson.

Here is a summary of the Valencia Plan -- breaking the Challenger Selection Series for the Louis Vuitton Cup into its four phases:

• The Acts: Beginning with Act 4 this month (the 2004 Acts will not be counted), at the end of each Act the first-placed Challenger (irrespective of Alinghi's final place) scores points equal to the number of Challengers (11), the second place Challenger scores one less point, etc. These points are multiplied by the weighting factor for that Act: 2005 Acts x 1, 2006 Acts x 2, 2007 Act x 3. After the final (13th) Act in April 2007, the total points each Challenger has accumulated will rank the Challengers first through last. This "Louis Vuitton Rank" is used to award bonus points to be carried forward by Challengers into the Round Robins. LV Rank 1 is awarded four bonus points, LV Ranks 2, 3, and 4 each get three bonus points, LV Ranks 5, 6 and 7 two bonus points, and LV Ranks 8-11 one bonus point. Challengers will also be "seeded" into the Round Robin schedule of races according to LV Rank, with the highest-ranked teams meeting at the end of each Round Robin.

• The LVC Round Robins: In mid-April thru early May 2007 the 11 Challengers will sail two Round Robins, match-racing each of the other 10 Challengers twice for a total of 20 matches each (110 matches in total!). Each Round Robin win counts 2 points. Maximum possible points a Challenger could have at the end of the Round Robins is 44 (20 race wins x 2 points, plus a maximum of 4 bonus points). At the end of the second Round Robin, the four Challengers with the most points advance to the Semi-Finals, and the Challenger with the most points at the end of the Round Robins gets to choose which of the other three it will race in its Semi-Final series.

• The LVC Semi-Finals: In mid-May 2007, head-to-head match racing for the two Semi-Final "pairs." The winner of each Semi-Final is the first to win five races.

• The LVC Finals: In early June 2007, the winners of the two Semi-Final series meet in the LVC Finals; again, the winner is the first to win five races. The winner of the LVC Finals is awarded the Louis Vuitton Cup, and races the Defender in the 32nd America's Cup Match beginning 23 June 2007 (also first to win five races).

The actual dates of the two Round Robins, the Semi-Finals and the Finals will be finalized shortly by the Challenger Commission and ACM.