Grant Dalton, team leader, Emirates Team New Zealand, on winning Act 2:
You never come in not wanting to do your best, and (winning) that's the way it fell this time…it's a fickle game and it can go the other way very easily. Maybe they (the other three big teams) are oriented a little further up the wind range. But I thought we sailed nicely…the back of the boat got the tight calls right.
Philippe Presti, skipper, LE DEFI, on finishing top of the 'B' division:
Fifth is the best we could do. It will be difficult to do it again in the fleet racing. We are very close in performance to K-Challenge. We saw that in Marseille and it is the same here again. +39 is improving. They are very good sailors. Match racing is difficult for them, but they will be better in the fleet racing, I think. Shosholoza were not lucky at all, so I hope they will do better in the fleet racing. But the 'B' division is very tight, and I think we will see very exciting racing.
Gavin Brady, BMW ORACLE Racing helmsman, on finishing third:
We dropped the ball a couple of times and then we didn't get all the races in, so you really couldn't afford to lose those matches. The boats are pretty similar in these conditions and the teams are good so once you get behind there's not a lot of passing lanes.
Ashton Sampson, mid-bow on Team Shosholoza, on his teams results in Act 2:
The spirit on our team is still very good. We know that we've been working hard. Our results are a bit unfortunate, but we've had a couple of close ones with some of the teams, and that's a good thing, so we're not too disappointed.
Jochen Schuemann, sports manager, Alinghi, on why his team finished fourth in Act 2:
The reasons why we lost these races are very different. Sometimes we lost because we positioned ourselves badly or we made a tactical mistake. Against Luna Rossa we let them pass us downwind after we'd been leading the whole race. Against BMW ORACLE we had some material failures. Added up, we don't win the regatta, so it's very simple really.
Thierry Peponnet, skipper, K-Challenge, on fleet racing in the Valencia Louis Vuitton Act 3:
I think it will be more open for the small teams. In the fleet race you have the top boats matching each other which should give us some opportunities. I hope we can make a few good races. It should be better. I really like the fleet race starts…it's very spectacular.
Iain Percy, skipper, +39, on finishing seventh:
For us, the objective this week was to learn, we didn't care where we finished. It's the next two and half years that counts.
James Spithill, helmsman, Luna Rossa, on the one that got away:
It's always tough, but we really should have won our race yesterday against ETNZ. It was tough conditions, but they did a better job. It is a little frustrating, and it would have been nice to finish off the second Round Robin, but we're pretty happy with how we've gone this week.
