Alinghi opened the doors to its new home Saturday evening, holding a house warming for 700 guests. The party was attended by Syndicate head Ernesto Bertarelli and his family, Brad Butterworth, vice-president and tactician, Grant Simmer, co-general manager and head of design, Patrick Magyar, co-general manager and the Alinghi team with their families.

Also attending the evening, which kicked off with a lights and acrobatic show, were Swiss Federal President Samuel Schmid and President of the region of Valencia, Francisco Camps and Mayoress of Valencia, Rita Barberá. They were welcomed by Bertarelli and shown, among other areas, the interactive zone, the shop and the full-size Alinghi Simulator before being led up to the roof terrace for the party. The Defender’s 6,891sq m base has taken 10 months to build and has been purposely designed to merge the team’s everyday life with the technology required to win the 32nd America’s Cup.

Ernesto Bertareli, Alinghi syndicate head commented:”It is a pleasure for me to open this base today, it has been quite a long time that we have been waiting to recover a place where we can share the emotions we had in 2003.

“It has been a long road since our victory in Auckland and tonight more
than anything I would like to thank every member of Alinghi and every
family member of the members of Alinghi that have followed the dream from
Auckland to Valencia.”

Alinghi held a public open house in their new Valencia base yesterday afternoon.