Gorgeous Anna Kournikova came to Plymouth(UK) to give the official start of the Transat 2004. At 1400hrs BST on 31 May 2004, a star ambassador of Omega watch, a tennis player and a part-time model, waved off the largest professional fleet that the grueling transatlantic yacht race has ever seen.

Anna took a sailing lesson from record-breaking yachtswoman Ellen MacArthur on board an Open 50 class racing yacht before the race. As the Open 60 class winner of the Europe1 NewMan STAR in 2000 (as The Transat was then known), Ellen was undoubtedly one of the best teachers Anna Kournikova could have hoped for and one of the best placed people to explain what was be going through the skippers' minds as they were preparing to depart.

Thousands of spectators came to watch 37 racers begin the two-week sailing challenge, which finishes in Boston on the east coast of America. The model, rumored to have recently married her gorgeous lover Enrique Iglesias, posed for pictures before getting on board.