America's Cup Diary

Strength and fitness will be a key element for the eventual cup winners, but could kiwi ingenuity still have a part to play?

- Andy Rice

Ben Ainslie is known for his superstitions. For all five of his Olympic regattas he would start day one of the competition clean shaven but for the next week would not dare trim his beard until the medal was secure. And all of his boats were called Rita, just as his first Optimist was known as more than 30 years ago. On 5 February Sir Ben turned 40 on and two days later he was at the newly opened team base in Bermuda with a hundred of his Land Rover BAR colleagues for the launch of his latest Rita, the 15m catamaran also known as R1.