BMW Oracle Racing will face Defender Team Alinghi and the ten other Challengers for the 32nd America’s Cup as the 2005 racing season gets underway tomorrow for Valencia Louis Vuitton Acts 4 & 5.

The Valencia regattas mark the first race against the entire fleet of Challengers and for the first time in the history of the 154-year-old Cup, a series of ‘pre-regattas’ will be weighted toward the Challenger Selection Series for the Louis Vuitton Cup in 2007.

“The Louis Vuitton Acts 4 & 5 in Valencia open an exciting chapter in the America’s Cup,” said BMW Oracle Racing CEO Chris Dickson. “This scoring system further motivates us to win as we push ourselves harder when we know that every race ultimately counts toward victory in 2007. We are now at the halfway point in our campaign and we are seeing some results from the first two years. We hope to build on this in 2005 with a good performance on the race course starting with Acts 4 & 5 in Valencia.

“After training in-house over the past three months, we are confident we will have our best team on the starting line on 16 June. With all teams sailing in newly modified Version 5 boats, we look forward to checking in with our competitors to see where we stand. It’s a clean slate for all and a very exciting time for this event.”

The two June competitions, Louis Vuitton Act 4 (16-21 June), consisting of traditional match racing, and Louis Vuitton Act 5 (24-26 June), fleet racing format, will be staged in the waters of the 32nd America’s Cup to be contested here in 2007. The pre-regattas leading up to the America’s Cup are a new innovation in the competition for the world’s oldest and most coveted sailing trophy.

The results of the Louis Vuitton Act 4 will be entered into the newly established points system – like those of the remaining nine acts taking place over the next two years. This evaluation will be used to establish the seeding for the Louis Vuitton Cup 2007, in which the challenger of Team Alinghi will be determined.