Sailing: Admiral's choice
THE Royal Ocean Racing Club produced some fancy footwork yesterday to avoid devaluing the Admiral's Cup, while making it cheaper to join the party.
Any thoughts of a move into the International Measurement System of handicapping were discarded, but national teams for the 1993 event can choose either three boats as before, one 50-footer, one 45-footer (two-tonner) and one 40-footer (one-tonner), or any two of the three.
Still racing under the International Offshore Rule, only the best two results of each team will count in the six-race series, which will again be made up of four inshore races, a 200-mile Channel race, and the 605-mile Fastnet Race.
'The decision to open up two-boat teams has been effected (to reward) those countries which bring three boats, but encourages those who could not otherwise compete to do so and still have a chance of winning,' the RORC's director of racing, Alan Green, said.
After a meeting which included representatives from Australia, New Zealand, the United States, France and Denmark, Green said he was confident of attracting at least eight teams in 1993, the same number which entered in 1991, when France won for the first time.
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