The skies over the normally nondescript industrial area of Villeneuve on the southern shores of Lake Geneva will be darkened next Wednesday by a strange, menacing object, not unlike a praying mantis, slung under a serious muscle machine of a helicopter.

It will be a racing yacht, but not as we know them, its mission, like the black widow it resembles, is lethal, and, while it had been built in the name of sport and will carry the very non-commercial name of Alinghi, it is not for fun.

Nearly 4,000 miles away, in northern California, its target and rival machine is being given round the clock attention in Anacortes. For both, the prize is a trophy which originated in Cowes, on the Isle of Wight in 1851. When a marauding bunch of buccaneers from New York beat the best that Britain could muster, it became the America’s Cup.

The event has been littered with rows and arguments ever since, but few more bitter than the 24-month clash between the current holder, Switzerland’s Ernesto Bertarellli, and the self-made software magnate Larry Ellison. Both are rich and both hate any reference to this being a battle of the billionaires.

After taking the cup away from the Kiwis in Auckland in 2003 and successfully defending it against the again in 2007 Bertarelli thought he was in complete control of the whole event, but the blueprint he put up for the next event had a legal flaw in it which was pounced on by Ellison’s BMW Oracle team. Several court hearings later and the two will meet in mortal combat next February. The Swiss are due to announce the venue no later than 8 August.

If it has stopped the cup in its tracks as far as the rest of the world, including Britain’s Team Origin, is concerned, it has also spawned a boffins’ paradise with huge budgets being thrown at producing the fastest machine that can stay in one piece for a maximum of three 20-mile races. The science lab atmosphere for the designers has been described by one of them, Britain’s Nigel Irens, as “almost monastic.”

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