Tuesday 25 November 2014 17:09, UK
Sir Ben Ainslie hopes Portsmouth's successful bid to host two World Series races will help his team's America's Cup challenge.
Ainslie announced earlier this year he was putting together a team with the aim of challenging Oracle Team USA in 2017 for sport's oldest trophy.
Five challengers will compete in three stages of qualifying over the next three years for the right to take on Oracle, who won the 2013 Cup with the help of Britain's four-times Olympic champion.
The first stage of qualifying is the World Series, a programme of races in 45-foot boats over 2015 and 2016, and it was announced on Tuesday that Portsmouth will host one event in each year.
Portsmouth is also the base for Ainslie's team, and he told Sky Sports News HQ: "It's fantastic for us to be able to race in front of a home crowd in the World Series - a global series in the build-up to the next America's Cup in 2017. Very exicting.
This is a small step towards the overall result, but it's really important for us to be able to race at home on a global front.
"It will be raced in the 45-footers we saw in the build-up to the last America's Cup - they'll be flying out of the water like we saw in San Francisco last year.
"The series will count - in a very small way - but it will still count towards the next step of the America's Cup which is for all challenging teams - ourselves, the French, the Swedes, the Italians and New Zealanders.
"The winner of that series then goes into the final against the Americans. It's a small step towards the overall result, but it's really important for us to be able to race at home on a global front."
The venue for the actual America's Cup is due to be announced on December 2 - Hamilton in Bermuda and the American city of San Diego are the candidates - and Ainslie's target is overall victory even as he seeks further funding for his team.
"A fantastic group of private investors have come in behind us," he said. "We're well on the way to finishing our purpose-built base in Portsmouth and we've been out sailing our first testing boat for the last couple of months.
"In the last 10-12 months we've achieved a huge amount, but we've still got a lot to do up until 2017 to get it right and bring the Cup home. We still need to bring in more commercial partners, and having a venue in the UK is a big part of that."
