From the window of his office, Mike Sanderson has a fine view of HMS Warrior and the historic naval dockyard in Portsmouth. Over the next four years, as mastermind of the best funded, most credible British challenge for the America’s Cup since the days of Sir Thomas Lipton, he might need every ounce of his warrior spirit.

Already, Team Origin and its chief executive are enduring a crash course in the dark arts of America’s Cup politics. Glimpses of a rapprochement between duelling billionaires Larry Ellison, the billionairehead of Oracle, and Ernesto Bertarelli, the mere multi-millionaire owner of Alinghi, the defenders, came latelast week. Whether they will come in time to stop the legal process due to take another turn in the New York Supreme Court tomorrow(Sept 10th) is another matter. While two very rich men argue over the rules for the 33rd America’s Cup, scheduled for Valencia in the summer of 2009, Sanderson and Sir Keith Mills, the twindriving forces behind the newBritish team, are recruiting a design and sailing team to compete with the very best when the time comes. The onlyproblem is that nobody quite knows what the game is, let alone the rules. When you speak to people from other sports, they say But that’s not fair’,” laughs Sanderson, the dynamic New Zealander bequeathed one of the last great quests in British sport. “You have to explain that nothing is fair here. This is the America’s Cup”

On Friday, Team Origin will take the first step towards turning a dream just ask Sir ThomasLipton, who challenged for the Auld Mug five times without success into reality with the announcement of the core of his its team. These arestill early days, but decisions taken over the next month in terms of infrastructure and organisation, the means by which a complex and disparate group of highly talented and well motivated individuals communicate, will go a long way to determining the fate of Britain’s challenge. The failure of the most recent £120m BMW-Oracle campaign is enough to highlight the dangers of creating an overblown and unnecessarily autocratic style of management.

Sanderson admits he does not have thetime to establish new relationships; many of the faces unveiled on Friday will be old friends. There is a marked similarity between the ABN- Amro campaign, which Sanderson led to victory in the last Volvo Round the World race, and the embryonic new formula for the America’s Cup, with its new class of boat and restricted two-boat campaigns.

The involvement of the sailing team in the initial concept and design of the Volvo 70, created by the brilliant and mercurialJuan Kouyoumdjian, Juan Kyoumondjian,proved critical to the dominance of ABN- Amro from the first leg to the finish. While other designers had prepared for lighter winds, Juan K, as he is universally known, designed a broader, sturdier boat to cope with higher average winds. More importantly, everyone was involved in the creative process.

“From the start, there was no sense of, ‘Here’s the boat, now you go and sail it’,” says Sanderson. “The fastest boat has always won the America’s Cup, but the fastest boat doesn’t always come off the design board. You’ve got to have the right sails, the right masts, the right guys sailing the boat and the right design team.

“There are two keys aspects to the design team. One is that they work well among stthemselves,and the other is that they have the right mentality to work with the sailing teamand thetechnical team. Youdo need some guys who will say:, ‘Yeah, that could be faster but it’s not going to win us the America’s Cup’. Let’s concentrate on that one question: ‘Will it help us win the cup?’ ”

The difficulty for all of thefive official challengers to Alinghi is that the page where a new design might be still remains tantalisingly blank. We know thatthe length of the new America’s Cup boat will be 27m and the draft will be 6.51m. But until the teams’ representativesgather to iron out detailed specifications at a series of meetings due to start on Saturday, (Sept 15th) -and to report late next month, the rest is conjecture. “The next America’s Cup will be about who gets the concept right,” says Sanderson. “But, right now, we’re painting with a broad brush.”

With a sail area potentially increased by 20% per centand a lighter boat, the new class of America’s Cup boat promises to be faster,particularly downwind, more punishing to sail and more fun to watch. The last cup match between Alinghi and Team New Zealand restored much of the human spectacle to America’s Cup racing. Alinghi won the decisive race by one second; and race three, in which the lead changed hands three times, was an epic. Yet in the words of Juan K: “It was like doing Formula One in a tractor.”

Even Alinghi would struggle to beat a new Volvo 70, a boat designed to circumnavigate the world, around the inshore waters of an America’s Cup course. It was time for a change. The only question was whether, in making somesignificant changes to the balance between challenger and defender, Bertarelli and Alinghi have consigned the newly televisual America’s Cup back to the days of highly sophisticated and dull processions.

By registering as a challenger to Alinghi, as opposed to joining the rebel Oracle group, Team Origin have taken the expedient course. Firstly, they will now have a say in the formulation of the new rule; second, they will be able to negotiate one of the better bases in Valencia’s harbour and to bring one of the pre-America’s Cup Acts to these shores, most probably into the Solent for the first time since LibertyAmerica won the inaugural race round the Isle of Wight in 1851.

“The chances of us winningthis America’s Cup have gone up since the change of rule,” says Sanderson. “We’re going into this to win it and we couldn’t have said that under the old rule. Team Origin is stronger than it was six months ago.”

The team announced on Friday will be a mixture of high-profile British talent and international experience. In Jason Ker, who worked with Shosholoza during the last cup campaign,on the last Cup, and Andy Claughton, at Team New Zealand, (check),Britain have two talented, world-class designers with immediate experience of the America’s Cup. Two-time Olympic gold medallist Ben Ainslie’s skills as a big boat helmsman have been honed by New Zealand, but, with more than 50 other Britons involved in Valencia, a core of shore-based skills have also been developed. in the years since the under-funded GBR Challenge.

The stars, as Sanderson says, are in alignment. “Bringing the cup back home, that’s the priority and that’sthe appeal, even to the international guys,” he adds. “This is the last chapter in the history of the America’s Cup. Everything else has been done.”