the team secured sponsorship from HealthSouth to ensure their participation. The team built USA-50 and USA-54, both called Abracadabra 2000, and opted to train in Hawaii, rather than Auckland, before the Cup. The crew included Chris Larson, Cameron Dunn, Brian MacInnes, Marco Constant, and John Bertrand. America True (USA) America True was one of two syndicates from the San Francisco Bay Area in 2000. The team was led by CEO Dawn Riley and John Cutler served as helmsman. The team was funded largely with private funding provided by G. Christopher Coffin, which allowed them to purchase Tag Heuer before developing USA-51. The design team, led by Phil Kaiko, also benefited from America3's design information. The crew included Buddy Melges, Kelvin Harrap, David Armitage, Carl Barkow, Liz Baylis, Ben Beer, Jamie Boeckel, Greg Burrell, Merritt Carey, Lisa Charles, Tom Faire, Daniel Fong, Scott Gregory, Stephen Gruver, Peter Heck, Al Palewicz, Katie Pettibone, Hal Sears, John Spence, Latimer Spinney, John Sweeney, Tucker Thompson, Brad Webb, Jon Ziskind, Jeff Madrigali, David Stevenson and Leslie Egnot. David Barnes skippered the testing boat. Desafio Español (ESP) Skippered by Pedro Campos, as in 1992 and 1995, the team added Olympic medal winning sailor Luis Doreste to the crew in 2000. Backed by the government, royal family and major sponsor Telefonica. The team built ESP 47 and ESP 56. Before the regatta a crew member, Martin Wizner, died almost instantly when he was hit in the head by a broken piece of equipment. FAST 2000 (SUI) Led by experienced French campaigner Marc Pajot and with German Jochen Schümann as helmsman, the FAST 2000 team was the countries first America's Cup challenge. SUI 59 was an unknown quantity when it arrived in Auckland but the syndicate ended up with a disappointing 2 wins over the course of the Cup. Other crew members included Enrico Chieffi, Pierre Fehlmann, Yves Detrey, and Hans Bernard. Le Defi BTT (FRA) Le Defi Bouygues Telecom Transiciel was a one boat challenge from France led by Syndicate head Luc Gelluseau and operations manager Pierre Mas. The team was skippered by Bertrand Pacé, who replaced Marc Pajot from the 1995 challenge, and Thierry Peponnet was the teams tactician. Thierry Fouchier was also on the crew. Two other French syndicates attempted to form challenges and almost competed as Le Defi Sud, but in the end lacked the money required to charter a boat to compete. Nippon