By Vincent Daheron
LORIENT, France, March 17 (Reuters) - Spain's Diego Botin and Florian Trittel, gold medallists at the 2024 Olympics in the 49er class, have joined the French team for the 38th America's Cup in 2027, with La Roche-Posay announced as the team's new sponsor on Tuesday.
La Roche-Posay, the skin care brand from L'Oreal Groupe which previously partnered with the French SailGP Team, will now lend its name to the rebranded La Roche-Posay Racing Team.
"America's Cup is mythic, iconic," Alexandra
Reni-Catherine, La Roche-Posay's global brand general manager, told a press conference on Tuesday.
"It mixes two extremes: the oldest trophy in sports history and a step forward in tech, innovation."
The French team, previously known as K-Challenge Team, have named their nine-member crew for the 2027 event in Naples.
Quentin Delapierre, Jason Saunders and Timothe Lapauw, already on board for the 2024 America's Cup, are joined by Botin and Trittel, as well as Amelie Grassi, Enzo Balanger, Leigh McMillan and Bruno Mourniac.
"This lineup is just amazing," said Philippe Presti, the team's new sports director and twice an America's Cup winner as a coach of Oracle Team USA.
Skipper Delapierre shared Presti's optimism.
"It's an amazing lineup, with a lot of talent and experience. I believe this team will go very far. I'm very serene for this team," he said.
This America's Cup will mark Botin and Trittel's debut in the historic competition. The pair also won the 2023-2024 SailGP Championship with the Spanish team.
"Racing America's Cup was a dream for us since we were little kids. Doing it with this team is great," Botin, who has a French mother, told Reuters.
"It became a goal and now a reality," the 32-year-old Spaniard said. "While we grew up in the sport, we saw that we have the abilities to be in an America's Cup team. I believe we can help the team with our experiences in other competitions."
The two Spanish navigators are "incredibly talented with a huge potential", Presti told Reuters. "These two guys are not only talented but also incredibly kind."
The AC75 boat, which will be used during the 2027 America's Cup, will be launched in June, in Lorient.
"We’ll start sailing in June because we’ve made a few changes to the crew, so we’ll need to train to get in sync, and in the meantime, they’ll be sailing on the AC40, which is sort of a test boat," CEO Stephan Kandler told Reuters.
"We’re reusing everything we already had in Barcelona, which keeps costs down significantly. We are a small team compared to others, so that also reduces the budget. So we are a long way from the 75 million cap.
"We want to be ambitious and I think that reaching the Louis Vuitton final, something France has never achieved, is already a worthy goal," Kandler added.
(Reporting by Vincent Daheron, editing by Ed Osmond)
