Wednesday morning finally saw some America's Cup activity in Valencia, even if one could argue about its relation to the world's oldest sports event.

Desafío Español, the now-invalidated Challenge of Record of the 33rd America's Cup, summoned the press in its base in order to present the team's TP52 and GP42 campaigns for the summer as well as give the current state of affairs in the challenger.

Present where Agustín Zulueta, general manager, John Cutler, technical director and in charge of the TP52 campaign, and Laureano Wizner, helsman and skipper of the GP42 campaign.

According to Zulueta, the team's current strategy revolves around three main points:

1. Desafío Español is primarily an America's Cup challenger and as such it had to adapt its program to the current difficult situation. The main objective is to save money. One of the most drastic decisions was to completely abandon the design of an AC90 yacht.

2. The team has now three sponsors; Iberdrola, the Valencia Region and Quebramar. In order for them to have a return on their investment and given the absence of any America's Cup activity in 2008, the obvious strategy was to participate in the TP52 and GP42 circuits. Iberdrola will use them as a roadshow in order to promote its services around Spain. The TP52 and GP42 campaigns are merely training tools. They will also serve to keep the sailing crew together and eventually bring back sailors that had joined other America's Cup challengers.

3. Still the most important announcement was that finally, Desafío Español had chosen to represent a new yacht club, bringing the relation with the CNEV to an end. More precisely, from now on the Spanish team will represent the Real Club Maritimo del Abra, located in Bilbao, in northern Spain.

One obvious question was why didn't Desafío Español choose to represent Valencia's yacht club, given the physical proximity and of course the fact both Alinghi and BMW Oracle have stated that the 34th America's Cup will also take place in Valencia, regardless of the outcome of the 33rd edition.

Zulueta's answer was odd and even if it sounded credible it caused lots of smiles from the journalists in the conference room. Desafío Español's general manager declared that the decision was very simple and purely "alphabetical"!!!

He had received a letter, dated 11 December 2007, from the association of Spanish yacht clubs where they stated that given the CNEV fiasco, each and every yacht club in the country was offering itself to let Desafío Español race its colors.

What was Zulueta's solution to the problem? In order to avoid the acrimonious Spanish regional disputes by choosing Valencia over Barcelona or vice versa, he took the list of all clubs ranked alphabetically and chose the first one, "Abra", or more precisely "Real Club Maritimo del Abra".