There might be a German sailing team to challenge the world's oldest sports trophy. For ten months so far, a group of investors, marketing specialists and sailing experts have been working on making the German challenge happen.

The campaign will start with a crew of young and mainly German sailors under the name of "Fresh Seventeen". Plans are to generate a 45 million Euro fund before the end of November this year.

The project Fresh Seventeen has been initiated by Deutsche Challenge 2007 AG (DC 2007 AG). The DC 2007 AG is responsible for implementing the project structures as well as for securing the financing.

Marketing has been placed in the hands of the Swiss-based expert agency Prince Henry TV & Sponsoring AG (Zug). The Financial Director of DC 2007 AG is holding manager Thomas Robl from Munich, who will work with sailing experts Andreas John (Sports Director) from Hamburg and Eberhard Magg (Technical Director) from Kressbronn on Lake Constance.

John will be selecting the crew that he plans to build and lead to world class sailing in cooperation with leading international sailing professionals. Magg is putting together a design and construction team and will be responsible for coordinating the building of a new boat for 2007.

"Germany really needs an America's Cup team and to sail at long last in the premium class of the most beautiful sports there is," says living sailing legend and Olympic winner of 1964, Willy Kuhweide.

The 61-year-old German, who now lives in Phoenix, Arizona/USA and Zurich, Switzerland, is Commodore and spokesman of the newly founded Deutscher Challenger Yacht Club (DCYC) e.V. that will formally file the challenge at the defending club Société Nautique de Genève (SNG) in Geneva/Switzerland.

Amongst the founding members of the DCYC are three of the most renowned and longest-standing German yacht clubs, which are Verein Seglerhaus am Wannsee (Berlin), Bayerischer Yacht-Club Munich (Starnberg) and Norddeutscher Regatta Verein (Hamburg).

The German Sailing Association (Deutsche Segler-Verband) has confirmed to provide the utmost support for the campaign.