It is widely known that all of the teams strongly believe that it is wiser/easier/faster to take a good match racer and turn him into a cat sailor than the other way around.
For the record:
"
3.1. The regatta format will be fleet racing."
Match racing skill may have even less bearing on the selection process than cat sailing experience.
The host city boat will be San Francisco's baby, a strictly homegrown affair. I have no idea who's coordinating it at this point, but the boat will be crewed by members or recent alumni of the Bay area's many youth sailing programs (some club-affiliated, others club-independent). I heard over the weekend--but can't say for sure that it's true--that even the stars of collegiate programs at Stanford, Berkeley, Cal Maritime, etc., will be passed over unless they themselves came up through the ranks of San Francisco's junior programs.
For everyone else in the country the ticket will be to get noticed by Oracle. Given the direction Oracle has taken the Cup, not to mention the long-standing involvement of many its team own members in small cat sailing, I think it's unfair to assume they're going to poo-poo cat sailors when it comes to picking their youth team. In fact, I don't think the whole blue-blazer-vs.-catsailor narrative even makes any sense to them. (If it did, our eyes would still be glazing over watching Version 5 boats drift around in prestarts.) They just want talent, and they'll be looking for winners. Whether they won on big boats or small boats, one hull or two hulls, singlehanded or as part of a big monoslug crew--who knows? But winners they will be.
