Sailing: Alinghi coasts to early advantage in Cup

The Alinghi team took a 1-0 lead in the final of the Louis Vuitton Cup with a demonstration of raw power here yesterday, inflicting a decisive defeat on Oracle BMW.

Despite a variety of explanations later, which said that Russell Coutts' Swiss team had been a bit lucky, that the wind pattern had favoured them, that the gods were on their side Chris Dickson and his crew on Oracle will have to fight every inch of the way if they are to prevent Alinghi muscling their way in like fashion to the rest of the five wins needed to wrap up the nine-race series.

The glummest face on the Hauraki Gulf belonged to one of the richest men in the world, Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of the Oracle computer software house which has backed the San Francisco campaign to win the Cup.

At least he had been allowed back on his own boat, not as a crew member but as a guest. The silencing of the normally loquacious Ellison, as is required by the rules, was made all the more poignant by the 1min 24sec defeat suffered by his team.

Alinghi's victory also provided the perfect response to the jeers of some Kiwis as the boat left its Viaduct Basin berth. Coutts has twice won the America's Cup for his native New Zealand, but his defection to an overseas challenger has seen him branded as a traitor and spawned not just advertising campaigns appealing to nationalist loyalty but threats of violence. Things were much quieter when he returned.

Alinghi was outplayed in the pre-start manoeuvres by Oracle's starting helmsman, Peter Holmberg, as both boats wanted to be on the left-hand side of the track.

But, after a couple of minutes, the yachts came back together and Alinghi, on the right, was able simply to hit the elevator button and drive up and away from Oracle.

That advantage was then helped mightily by a favourable wind and Alinghi was 47 seconds clear at the end of the first leg of the six-leg contest, in which three are sailed upwind and three down. From then on Coutts was rarely troubled as Dickson, deciding to take the helm for the rest of the race, made the fightback a personal mission.

In today's second race, he expects Holmberg to steer the boat more, explaining that he wants to be able to hand over to Holmberg with the boat ahead. The struggle between policy and instinct could be an interesting one.