America’s Cup Defender Alinghi has welcomed one of the world’s most renowned multihull sailors to the team – Loïck Peyron. The 50-year-old Frenchman has crossed the Atlantic 43 times; 18 single-handed. He has raced around the world twice, holds three Transat titles and two Transat Jacques Vabres.

“In every sailor’s mind, the America’s Cup is part of life. I have been following it for many years and now to be working for a team like Alinghi makes me proud,” Peyron said. “There is a tremendous amount of work for sure, but it’s a big challenge. An interesting strength of Alinghi is that it has a lot of knowledge from a lot of areas of the sport: monohulls, offshore sailing, multihulls; especially here in Switzerland. The way the team works is based on team spirit and the method works really well; they have proved it many times. Now like everybody here, I am impatient to go and sail on the lake to see the potential of this amazing machine.”

Brad Butterworth, Alinghi team skipper and four-time America’s Cup winner added: “We are looking forward to working with Loïck; he brings a lot of multihull experience – from both a design and sailing point of view – to a team that already has quite a bit of depth in this area of our sport. I think he will be an asset to this project and a good addition to the team.”