SAILING: The leading America's Cup contenders, Alinghi of Switzerland and embattled US team OneWorld, won their first races in the semi-finals of the Cup challengers' series in Auckland yesterday.
Alinghi led around all marks in the six-leg race in the Hauraki Gulf, off New Zealand's largest city, to comfortably beat US software billionaire Larry Ellison's Oracle BMW Racing team by 71 seconds.
OneWorld, which survived protests seeking to have them disqualified in a long-running cup spy scandal, beat Italy's Prada by 47 seconds in the opening race of their best-of-seven Louis Vuitton Cup challengers semi-finals series.
But OneWorld's 1-0 lead is on paper only after a Cup arbitration panel decided to penalise the Seattle-based team one point in each remaining stage of the regatta.
OneWorld crewman Andrew Taylor said the panel's decision had motivated the sailing team.
"We're all professionals so it's just a matter of us coming down to the nitty-gritty of the competition and we've got to get on with it," said Taylor.
The panel decided to penalise the OneWorld team after finding they had failed to declare boat design secrets taken from other teams. The panel sat after Prada and beaten challengers Team Dennis Conner lodged protests seeking OneWorld's disqualification.
