Feature Story

24.03.2009 (12:26 CET) - Geneva, Switzerland - Alinghi

Get your skates on!

Swiss Champions get together for an ice-hockey match

Shelkan, the ice-hockey club mascot, comes in to roost on Brad's arm

(Photo credit: Carlo Borlenghi/Alinghi)

Alinghi team members swapped their sailing gear for ice hockey padding and sticks yesterday to play an ice hockey match with local Geneva team Genève-Servette Hockey Club (GSHC) alongside Ladycat Décision 35 team members.

It was a friendly but fast-paced match where the Alinghi-Ladycat team beat the home team by eight goals to their seven. For some of the sailors, designers and shore crew members this was their first time on an ice rink: “This was a first for me - my first time on ice and my first time holding a hockey stick! The truth is it’s very difficult to even see the puck, but I was lucky that being the goal keeper, the disc bounced off my body a lot of the time. The puck is too fast to apply my skills as a navigator plus there is no electronic instrumentation on the ice rink!”, Juan Vila said.

For others, such as Nils Frei, this wasn’t the first time on skates: “It was great, I hadn’t ice skated since I was a young boy on the iced lake near my home… We hope that there will be good conditions on Lake Geneva for our home game. If the wind is strong we are going to have fun with the D35s!”

Pierre-Yves Jorand, coach for Alinghi, describes how it felt to share the passion all three teams have for sport and competition: “It has been an amazing experience, a real challenge to even stand up on the ice let alone hold a hockey stick with any precision. And then once you master these two, you have to face the opposition! After a day like today I have even more admiration for the Genève-Servette Hockey Club players. It’s a pace of play that you can't even begin to imagine from watching a match on TV.”

The GSHC players will join the Alinghi and Ladycat sailing teams for a return match in late May/early June for a regatta series on Lake Geneva. Brad Butterworth, Alinghi team skipper, explains: “I’ve watched this ice-hockey team play before here in Geneva, so I think it’s a good thing to have the two teams together. It’s been really fun, interesting also to see that some of our guys are pretty good on the ice! The return match on the Décision 35 catamarans on the water will be very interesting; I’m looking forward to that.”