Hours after Perpetual Loyal won Sydney-Hobart line honors "faster than any boat in the race’s 72-year history, its skipper wasn’t quite ready to ring the bell on an America’s Cup challenge," according to D.D. McNicoll of THE AUSTRALIAN. All Anthony Bell would confirm, as rumors "continued to swirl that he was about to announce a syndicate to challenge for sailing’s ultimate prize, was he would not sail his supermaxi in next year’s Sydney-Hobart." Bell: "Like everything, my plans have me thinking about the next thing and I have plans about something new and exciting I am going to do in sailing. That will be my next move." Pushed on whether "he was about to make a long-awaited announcement on a challenge for the America’s Cup in 2021, he declined." He said, "This is all about celebrating winning the Sydney-Hobart. It is not the time for that announcement." Australia’s last challenge for the America’s Cup was in Auckland in '00 "when veteran Sydney sailor Syd Fischer put a teenage crew aboard his America’s Cup-class yacht Young Australia." Bell is "believed to be waiting until after the next edition of the America’s Cup, to be held in Bermuda in June next year, to make his announcement" (THE AUSTRALIAN, 12/29).
