GB2 and Alinghi Women & Youth name their squads for Naples 2027

With the second Preliminary Regatta in Naples wrapped up on 27 September, the AC40 programme now turns to next year’s two events. The Youth America’s Cup runs 2–6 June 2027 and the Women’s America’s Cup 5–9 July, both in Naples. Cobham-Ultra GB2 and Tudor Team Alinghi are the first to name their youth squads.

Britain have named eight youth sailors: four helms and four trimmers. This is a squad, not a race crew, and the four who race will be picked from the group before June. The selection narrowed 158 applications to 21 open triallists at Portland, then to a core squad of 13 in March. The last cut came after a three-day trial of interviews and assessed simulator sessions.

The helms are Finn Dickinson, Sam Dickinson, Ryan Littlechild and Duncan Gregor. Finn Dickinson is the ILCA Under-21 World Champion and finished fourth at this year’s senior ILCA European Championships in Athens. His brother Sam was fifth in the kite-foiling world rankings in September. Littlechild was fourth at the 2025 Moth Worlds and was confirmed off the back of a 10-month development programme with GB1.

The trimmers are Sam Webb, Jas Williams, Kuba Staite and Matt Beck. Webb has the most current racing of the group, having gone from the first simulator trials to a race seat at both Preliminary Regattas, sailing with Hannah Mills and Ellie Aldridge. Beck is the only member of Britain’s third-placed 2024 youth team still eligible. He has kept racing AC40s since Barcelona and has coached and run simulator work for Athena Pathway. And with Gregor and Williams already sailing together in the Nacra 17, one helm-trimmer pairing comes ready-made.

On the women’s side, Mills and Aldridge are confirmed as helms, with Hattie Rogers trimming and working as performance analyst. Britain were runners-up to Luna Rossa in the first Women’s America’s Cup in Barcelona. The full women’s line-up has not yet been published.

Alinghi have named five women and six youth sailors, four of whom raced in Barcelona.

The women are Laurane Mettraux, Jessica Berthoud, Milly Boyle, Marie Mazuay and Tine Rossel. Mettraux brings the deepest CV. She has raced GC32, TF35, Ocean Fifty and SailGP, trimmed in Alinghi’s 2024 Women’s Cup campaign and sailed with the team that won the 2024 Women’s Match Racing World Championship. Mazuay raced in both the Women’s and Youth Cups in 2024.

The youth squad is Micha de Weck, Arnaud Grange, Joshua Richner, Nilo Schärer, Matthieu Sistek and Nick Zeltner. Grange and Richner return from the 2024 youth crew, while Sistek used to work on the team’s shore crew.

Both squads sailed the AC40 in Naples straight after the Preliminary Regatta, though one of the six planned days was lost to thunderstorms. Nathalie Brugger ran the camp with Jann Schüpbach, who helmed the Swiss youth entry in Barcelona before moving up into the senior squad. Brugger summed up the week in Alinghi’s fan newsletter on 14 October.:“By the end of the week, the sailors were driving together without any help from me and Jann Schüpbach, and the youth team even managed to sail the AC40 without a coach on board.”

Luna Rossa defend both titles they won in Barcelona, but have yet to name a squad for either event. Their Women & Youth crew raced in Naples as Luna Rossa 2, with Margherita Porro, Max Antoniazzi, Lorenzo Sirena and Maria Vittoria Marchesini covering the helming roles and Giovanni Santi and Alice Linussi on trim. They finished sixth overall, losing the Women & Youth trophy to the Kiwis on count-back. Federico Figlia di Granara and Sirena joined the youth group in July, and the team says scouting is still going on. Women’s Cup-winning trimmer Maria Giubilei moved up to the senior team for the Preliminary Regatta in Naples.

Emirates Team New Zealand’s mixed crew won the Women & Youth category at the Naples Preliminary Regatta and finished fifth overall. That crew, made up of Jake Pye and Erica Dawson on helm and Josh Armit and Serena Woodall on trim, is not a 2027 selection for either event, and Armit and Woodall now head into their separate programmes. Dawson, an Olympic bronze medallist at Paris 2024 who sailed in the first Women’s America’s Cup, is set to return for the women’s team in Naples.

In March, France’s La Roche-Posay Racing Team picked nine women to train on the simulator and AC40 towards the Women’s Cup, having just finished recruiting its 2026–27 K-Challenge Academy intake. Final line-ups for either event have not been published.

ARC Team USA, which took over American Magic’s AC75 Patriot and two AC40s in April, trained a women’s team on one AC40 alongside its senior squad in Pensacola over the summer. Louisa Nordstrom, who raced the inaugural Women’s America’s Cup, is part of the founding senior squad. No women’s or youth line-up has been announced.

Team Australia named its seven-strong senior crew in September, with Tash Bryant in the P5 role. The Winning family, who are behind the senior challenge, also backed Australia’s youth and women’s entries in Barcelona, but no youth or women’s squad for 2027 has been named.

In Barcelona, six invited clubs from Sweden, Spain, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany and Australia entered youth teams alongside the Cup syndicates, but no invited entries for Naples have yet been announced.

GB2’s youth squad will now hold training camps in Naples, then move there full-time in early 2027. Alinghi’s women and youth sailors are back on the water in Naples in March.