Titchfield's golden boy Andy Beadsworth announced this week that his sights are securely focused on the next cup series.

The British America's Cup team helmsman will skipper an entry on the world match racing circuit over the next two years in preparation for the next Louis Vuitton Cup challenger series.

As Peter Harrison is still considering the future of GBR Challenge and is only investing in design and fundraising programmes with no sailing programme at present, Beadsworth has taken on the mantle of orchestrating a sailing schedule himself.

Beadsworth, who was the starting helmsman and strategist for Harrison's GBR Challenge is raring to go. "I want to compete successfully in the America's Cup," commented the man who has represented Great Britain twice at the Olympic Games in the match racing discipline and is a four-times British national champion.

"Alinghi showed you need a very strong sailing team as well as a fast boat to win the America's Cup and the standard is only going to get better."

He added: "Crew work and tactics will make the winning difference if the yachts have equal boat speed and those skills need to be sharpened on the world match racing circuit."

Beadsworth's crew will include GBR Challenge trimmers Richard Sydenham and Ian Budgen and bowman Matt Cornwell. This means having to support themselves through the programme and they are actively looking for their own match racing sponsor.

On the water their first step is to get racing and build their world ranking to a point where they receive invitations to all the major match racing events in 2004. From there it is to start winning grade one and Swedish Match tour events.

Beadsworth said: "The goal will then be to win the match racing world championship and take that momentum into the next America's Cup, hopefully with a British team."

Past match racing world champions include three-times Cup winning skipper and this week's America's Cup winner Russell Coutts of Team Alinghi, Oracle-BMW Racing's afterguard of Chris Dickson and Peter Holmberg and Dean Barker and Bertrand Pace from Team New Zealand.

Everyone is expecting to see more challengers in the next cup series and the world match racing circuit will be the showcase for those teams.

"We need to get out there and racing those teams to stand a chance of beating them in the America's Cup. Therefore, we hope a sponsor will seize the opportunity of backing our team and increase Britain's chances of winning the America's Cup in the future," concluded Beadsworth.

The grade one Elba Cup in Italy in May, one of the Swedish Match Tour events, will be the team's first opportunity to prove themselves.