A battle is brewing on the high seas, and it's going to be bloody. On June 23, off the coast of Valencia, Spain, the 32nd America's Cup will commence, and for the first time in 155 years it will take place in European waters. As defender of the Cup, Team Alinghi was entitled to host the event in the homeland of its backer, the 41-year-old Swiss biotech billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli, but Switzerland is landlocked.

Ever since 1851, the America's Cup, contested about every four years, has been luring wealthy sailors to risk their fortunes on a race whose only prize is the prestige of winning what's now the oldest trophy in international sports. And 2007 is shaping up to be one of the most intense clashes yet. Bertarelli, an accomplished sailor himself, has put $130 million behind Alinghi. Only his loudmouthed and ultracompetitive American rival, Larry Ellison, has surpassed that figure. Ellison, a software tycoon and founder of the BMW Oracle Racing team, was trounced in his last attempt to beat Alinghi in the 2003 America's Cup semifinals (5–1). For this bout, he's raised upwards of $200 million—by far the most ever spent on the competition—in an attempt to secure his revenge. "Whatever I want, I get," Ellison, who has taken a vow of silence with the press this time around, once said. "That's the beauty of being worth $26 billion."

But the path to the America's Cup is a long one. To secure the right to fight Alinghi, Ellison's BMW Oracle must first defeat the other 10 contenders in the Louis Vuitton Cup. For the past two years, all the teams—representing nine different countries from five different continents—have been sparring off the shores of Marseille (France), Malmö (Sweden), and Trapani (Italy) in a series of grand prix–style warm-up regattas called the Louis Vuitton Acts. After 12 of the 13 Acts, Alinghi, participating merely to stay sharp, holds the upper hand against BMW Oracle, but above them both is Emirates Team New Zealand, the two-time America's Cup champion led by the legendary Kiwi sailor Grant Dalton. Close behind in fourth place is Luna Rossa, the Italian team headed by Prada magnate Patrizio Bertelli. When asked how much time he's invested in preparing for the Cup, Bertelli, notorious for being incapable of leaving business behind, said, "All my free time and almost all weekends," which, for a man who seemingly has neither, is quite a lot.