Auckland, NZ --The Stars & Stripes team is not ready to pack up and go home just yet and today proved their desire to advance to the Final Round of the Louis Vuitton Cup by winning a very close and tactically challenging race against the San Francisco-based syndicate, AmericaOne.

Ken Read and crew on board Stars & Stripes did a magnificent job maneuvering USA-55 across the start line ahead and to windward of AmericaOne, which quickly turned into a 2 boat length lead.  Both boats
stayed incredibly close throughout the race and although the deltas at each mark were only between 13 and 45 seconds, the Stars & Stripes crew stayed focused and refused to let AmericaOne pass them.

Today's wind didn't exactly deliver its original forecast and what started out as an 18 knot race quickly eased to only 10 knots for the second half.  "The conditions today were favored for us more in the beginning than the end of the race" said Afterguard Member Peter Isler. "But Ken Read did a perfect job on the helm and we were able to hold off the hard charging AmericaOne as the breeze dropped down.  The whole crew did a great job today to stay close to the other boat because the wind was very shifty and we couldn't afford for them to get ahead.  Our entire America's Cup campaign was hanging on today's race and will hang again on tomorrow's race and our team has done an outstanding job at keeping it all together."

The final delta for today's race was 22 seconds.  Tomorrow, Stars & Stripes will race the San Francisco-based America True syndicate starting at 1:15pm NZ Time.

For more information contact::
Veronica Cahill
Media Relations
Team Dennis Conner
Sailing Compound: 64-9-9799-700
Mobile: 029-99-2013