The country that held the shiny silver pitcher for its first 132 years was eliminated Sunday by a nation that has never won it when Prada of Italy beat AmericaOne by 49 seconds for a 5-4 triumph in the best-of-9 challenger finals.

	Prada helmsman Francesco de Angelis drinks in his team's challenger series victory.

"Times change," Prada skipper Francesco de Angelis said.

Indeed.

Sailing in his first America's Cup, he rallied from a 4-3 deficit to win the last two races. AmericaOne skipper Paul Cayard, a loser in his three campaigns as a Cup skipper, carried with him the knowledge of the U.S. dominance.

"I've been conscious of the fact that we were America's last hope," said Cayard, who represents the St. Francis Yacht Club of San Francisco. "It's probably good in the big picture because it's raising the level of all the teams around the world."

Now Prada must prepare for the best-of-9 Cup finals against New Zealand, which won sailing's top prize for the first time in 1995 in San Diego. The last round begins Feb. 19.

After crossing the finish line, de Angelis wrapped his hands around a huge bottle of champagne. Cayard, his mood as gray as the clouds over the Hauraki Gulf, headed for port with no races left to sail.

"From one point of view, it's sad" that no American boat will be in the finals, de Angelis said. "On the other side, it means that something is changing in the sailing world, which I think is good for the sport. The more the sport is spread around, the better it is."

He said his team would take Monday off before focusing on its series against New Zealand.

Cayard pointed to the length and financing of Italy's campaign as the standard for the sport.

"Italy put up $100 million in 2½ years to beat us in one race," he said.

His campaign lasted half as long and cost less than half the money but he nearly reached the final round as he won three straight races. But de Angelis forced a deciding ninth race with Saturday's 37-second victory.

On Sunday, de Angelis led at every mark on the six-leg, up-and-back course with three legs into the wind and three with the breeze blowing from behind. He was in front by 1:06 with just one 3 1/8-mile downwind leg remaining.

Cayard had a chance to catch him. A very slim one. He needed a catastrophe to befall Prada's equipment.

Instead, the Italians had a celebration.

As de Angelis cruised across the finish line, his crew members shook hands and embraced. A passenger on Prada's tender waved an Italian flag as the boat, which carries non-sailing team members, pulled alongside.

One Prada sailor popped the cork on a champagne bottle and soaked his teammates.

Patrizio Bertelli, the primary backer of the campaign, wore a red vest and a wide smile as he boarded the yacht and shook hands vigorously with de Angelis.

Then the winning skipper lifted the bottle of champagne and took a long drink.

As hard as he tried, Cayard could do nothing about it. He admitted that being chief executive officer and primary fund-raiser of an America's Cup campaign for the first time may have been too much.

"I had a little too much on my plate also this time and probably wasn't as good a sailor this time around as I was in '95 and '92," he said, "but I like the (America's Cup) game. I like the organization. I am very proud of what AmericaOne did."

He didn't rule out another Cup campaign, in the Hauraki Gulf or the Mediterranean if Prada beats New Zealand, but said the Americans would have a better chance if they had fewer syndicates. There were five American campaigns among the original 11 challenger syndicates representing seven countries.

In Cayard's two previous campaigns as helmsman, he lost in the Cup finals in 1992 and 1995. But he's also a six-time world champion in other boats and won the grueling Whitbread Round the World Race in 1998.

Prada won the start by a second Sunday, a meaningless edge. But the stronger wind on Prada's side of the course pushed it to a 34-second lead after the first leg, into the wind.

"We wanted the right (side) real hard and we got the right," Cayard said. "It didn't work out for us on the first" leg.

The early lead allowed de Angelis to dictate tactics and he stretched the advantage to 39 seconds after the second leg and 47 midway through the race.

He kept pushing and flew to the horizon with leads of 52 seconds after the fourth leg and 1:06 after the fifth.

Throughout the series, both skippers said the boats were similar in speed.

"We weren't slower," de Angelis said with a laugh after the deciding race. "The fact that we went up to the ninth race means that the boats were pretty close."

Prada had taken a 3-1 lead in the series, but two of those wins resulted from equipment damage and a penalty on AmericaOne. Then AmericaOne won the next three races, reinforcing Cayard's reputation as a skipper who can't be rattled.

In 1992, he was at the helm of an Italian boat, Il Moro di Venezia, that trailed the challenger finals 3-1. But he won the next four races and went on to the Cup finals, where he lost 4-1 to Bill Koch's Stars & Stripes.

He couldn't repeat that comeback this time.

The race began 50 minutes late as officials waited for the fluky winds to pick up. They finally did, blowing from the southwest at 10-14 knots at the start.

About 30 seconds before the start, a Prada crewman warned de Angelis that he might reach the starting line too early. "Be careful," the sailor said.

De Angelis was.

The United States won the first 25 competitions, starting in 1851 when the schooner America, representing the New York Yacht Club, beat 14 other boats in one race around the Isle of Wight in England.

At the time, the trophy presented to the winner was called the 100 Guineas Cup, the amount it cost. It later was renamed for the first winner.

The first defense came in 1870, a 35-mile race off New York City with 14 NYYC boats going against England's Cambria, which finished 10th. Magic was the winner.

There were 11 more successful defenses in New York before the scene shifted to Newport, R.I., in 1920. American boats won 13 consecutive defenses there. But the nation's streak of 25 Cup triumphs ended in 1983 in Newport when John Bertrand's Australia II beat Dennis Conner's Liberty.

Conner regained the Cup in Fremantle, Australia, in 1987 and Americans retained it in 1988 and 1992 before New Zealand swept Young America, skippered by Cayard, 5-0 in San Diego in 1995.