The Louis Vuitton 38th America's Cup has its first competitive ground, and La Roche-Posay Racing Team will be there to meet it. Between 21 and 24 May 2026, the French challenger lines up in Cagliari, Sardinia, for the Preliminary Regatta that opens the Cup cycle before the main event reaches Naples in 2027.
Sardinia's Bay of Angels brings the entered teams together under genuine race conditions for the first time. The regatta is more than an opening formality. It will establish the sporting and strategic tone for every campaign as challengers begin their path toward Naples.
Five teams entered in the Louis Vuitton 38th America's Cup will be present in Sardinia, three of them also fielding Women & Youth crews. Eight AC40s in total will race, creating real competitive situations where squads can measure their readiness and take an honest first look at where they stand relative to the rest of the fleet.
Founded in 1851, the America's Cup holds the distinction of being the oldest continually contested trophy in international sport, and one of the most demanding environments in sailing anywhere in the world. It calls for elite execution on the water while drawing simultaneously on engineering, design, shore operations and strategic thinking. Sailors, technicians and specialists direct their collective work toward the same relentless objective: the fractions of a knot, the metres, the seconds that decide a campaign.
For La Roche-Posay Racing Team, arriving in Sardinia carries particular significance. The regatta comes only weeks after 17 March, when La Roche-Posay, a brand within the L'Oréal Groupe, was announced as Title Partner of the French project. The alliance brings together an internationally established skincare brand and a French sporting campaign built on science, performance, innovation and high standards. Two further partners, Mouser and MTN SAT, have joined the team during the same period, with additional announcements expected shortly.
Sardinia: the first real test
A Preliminary Regatta carries no points toward the final America's Cup standings, yet its value to a campaign is real. It places teams inside the competitive arena, lets them observe rivals under race pressure, test their systems and begin accumulating momentum before the stakes are higher.
In Cagliari, every crew races in identical AC40s, foiling monohulls capable of exceeding 40 knots and the one-design platform connected to the AC75 prototypes that will contest the Cup in Naples. With the equipment equalised across the fleet, the margin comes from execution alone: helming quality, trimming precision, tactical judgement and the composure each crew brings when the pressure is on.
The format is built for intensity. Up to eight fleet races will be followed by a head-to-head match-race final between the top two teams. Each AC40 carries four athletes, two helms and two trimmers. Short, sharp and demanding, the schedule is designed to quickly reveal where each team genuinely stands.
A new international line-up for the French Challenger
For this first competitive outing of the cycle, La Roche-Posay Racing Team will field a crew combining America's Cup experience, foiling capability and Olympic credentials. The four sailors operate within a tightly defined structure aboard the AC40, two helms and two trimmers, each continuously connected to the boat's flight systems, onboard data and the physical feedback of the yacht itself.
Two sailors from the Barcelona 2024 campaign form the crew's foundation. Quentin Delapierre, skipper and helm of the team, also helms the French F50 on the SailGP circuit. Alongside him, Jason Saunders brings trimming experience from both the 2024 French Cup campaign and his continuing involvement in SailGP. Their familiarity with the America's Cup environment gives the programme a grounded starting point.
Diego Botín and Florian Trittel complete the four-person crew. Both are Olympic champions. They contribute fresh perspective, world-class standards and a demonstrated capacity to absorb new environments quickly. Across the four sailors the profiles are complementary, combining the qualities most valuable at this stage of a campaign: rapid learning, clear information sharing and the ability to accelerate the group's development together.
Two reserve athletes will support the racing crew in Sardinia. Enzo Balanger, a helm from the K-Challenge Akademy and skipper of the French Youth team in 2024, and Timothé Lapauw, a trimmer with regular SailGP involvement and previous experience within K-Challenge during the 2024 Challenger campaign, both reflect the broader sporting pathway the organisation maintains between talent development and elite competition.
Before Sardinia, two spring training camps led by Sports Director Philippe Presti and coach Philippe Mourniac established the groundwork for the crew's work aboard the AC40. For Diego Botín and Florian Trittel, those sessions represented their first time sailing the boat. Across varied conditions, the focus stayed on fundamentals: boat handling, communication, starts, transitions and building progressive confidence with the boat's interfaces and automated systems.
Philippe Presti, Sports Director of La Roche-Posay Racing Team, said: "We made a lot of progress during the spring training camps. Diego and Florian were new to the AC40, and they integrated remarkably well. There was a real connection between the athletes, a shared drive to make the boat faster, to learn quickly and to correct what needed correcting straight away."
"Sardinia will allow us to take the next step. In training, you can feel that things are working; in racing, against other teams, under pressure and in real race situations, you find out where you truly stand. We arrive with fewer days on the water than some of the other teams, but with a great deal of talent, energy and room to improve. The objective for La Roche-Posay Racing Team is clear: to learn quickly, show that we can deliver strong moments and close the gaps race by race."
A sporting test and a statement of intent
Cagliari means considerably more to La Roche-Posay Racing Team than a first taste of competition. Strategically, it is the moment the campaign steps into the public, sporting and international arena, offering a platform to assert ambition, begin building the team's story and establish visibility with supporters, media, partners and the wider sailing community worldwide.
Stéphan Kandler, CEO of K-Challenge, the organisation behind the French challenger La Roche-Posay Racing Team, said: "Sardinia is an important moment for our team. It is the point at which the campaign truly enters the public, sporting and international arena. A Preliminary Regatta may be an opening event, but in the America's Cup, no event is minor. Every appearance matters: it shapes how the team is seen, builds momentum, brings people into the campaign and gives the project substance."
"With La Roche-Posay, a L'Oréal Groupe brand, we are building an ambitious, modern and demanding French team, one that intends to establish itself over the long term at the highest level of world sailing. This first confrontation will, of course, allow us to assess our sporting level. But it is also a powerful opportunity to create visibility: for the team, for our partners, for our athletes and for everything this project represents in terms of performance, innovation and French excellence."
"The America's Cup is unique because it is won not only on the water, but also on shore, through the ability to build a strong brand, create engagement and bring audiences into the campaign well beyond the traditional sailing community. That is one of our key objectives in Cagliari: to introduce La Roche-Posay Racing Team, define what makes us different and lay the first foundations of the story that will take us to Naples in 2027."
When La Roche-Posay Racing Team takes to the water in Sardinia, the task is twofold: to measure themselves honestly against the fleet, and to signal clearly, both on and off the water, what kind of campaign they intend to run. What begins in Cagliari is a story the French challenger plans to carry, with rigour, consistency and determination, all the way to Naples 2027.
