ORACLE TEAM USA trying pedal power?

THERE ARE MULTIPLE REPORTS overnight that OTUSA has installed a cycling station in the aft cockpits (port and starboard) to supplement the two grinding stations on each hull forward. Presumably, trimmer/tactican Tom Slingsby (AUS) is going to add a third title: "cyclor." At least that's what the Kiwis are calling their four, er, sailors who do little more on the yacht throughout the 20-minute races than provide pedal power for the hydraulic pumps.

By the way, I googled "cyclor" and got this:

Cyclor® activated sludge by sequencing batch reactor urban wastewater innovation the SBR (Sequencing Batch Reactor) process allows the completion of all treatment phases, successively, within the same tank Cyclor® is an activated sludge wastewater treatment process that is compact and designed for discharge in sensitive areas.

My spell checker doesn't like "cyclor" either. It keeps trying to change it to "cyclops."

I think I'd rather be called a "cycler," defined by the dictionary as "a person who rides or travels by bicycle, motorcycle, etc." Two nations divided by a common language and all that. Wait, that was Sir Winston talking about the U.S. and U.K.? George Bernard Shaw? Oscar Wilde?? Whatever.

The first hint of OTUSA's provisional pedal power was a post by Emirates Team New Zealand to their Facebook Page yesterday....

Our longtime Kiwi friend and esteemed yachting journal Richard Gladwell ran with that in an article Wednesday morning on Sail-World.com.

Many others America's Cup "experts" have followed, rushing to tweet, podcast, and otherwise post stories about the rumor with nary a photo to back it up. Not that's it's untrue, just that, as usual, some of the media may be getting ahead of themselves. It wouldn't be the first time an AC team pulled an April Fool's joke on another date, or tried to mimic something on another yacht with comic results – remember bolt-on winglets?

At any rate, here's the best summary of the current speculation that I have seen this morning – a bit of a breathless and chest-thumping article in the New Zealand Herald headlined, "Copy cats? Oracle testing bike grinding station, much like Team New Zealand."

ETNZ's four "cyclors" heads down and powering the pumps. Will the America's Cup be won, as one former AC winner put it, by "a helmsman, a trimmer and four gerbils?"