AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- Seattle's OneWorld Challenge sailed to a 1 minute, 16-second win over jury room antagonists Stars & Stripes at the America's Cup off Auckland on Tuesday.

OneWorld and Prada of Italy, which beat Sweden's Victory Challenge by 1:31, took 1-0 leads in best-of-seven race repechages, a first step toward the challenger semifinals starting Dec. 9.

For OneWorld, which beat Stars & Stripes after trailing by 55 seconds 6.5 miles into an 18.5-nautical-mile race, racing provided a reassuring diversion from pressing shore concerns.

Team legal and rules advisers were called before an international jury later Tuesday to confront charges from Stars & Stripes that OneWorld should be thrown out of the challenger series for breaching rules of fair sailing.

In the first part of what may be a long judicial process, the jury found Stars & Stripes' protest was valid and fell within the jury's jurisdiction.

Tuesday's jury action follows a larger complaint to the America's Cup Arbitration Panel, co-authored by Stars & Stripes and Prada, which accuses OneWorld of multiple violations of the Cup Protocol.

The jury and Arbitration Panel actions accuse OneWorld of obtaining technical secrets from other teams and used them in its own design process. Both demand OneWorld's disqualification.

The Seattle team, in a hearing earlier this year, admitted to the panel it received hull, deck, mast and sail information belonging to other teams but denied applying that information to its designs. The panel accepted OneWorld's admission and denial, and penalized it one competition point.

Stars & Stripes and Prada are attempting to reopen the case, claiming "new information evidencing extensive additional violations of the protocol.''

The jury has accepted a responsibility to hear the protest but the hearing will not begin before the best-of-seven repechages have ended. The hearing will not prevent the issue from being considered later by the Arbitration Panel.

Stars & Stripes will meet with the jury Wednesday to provide a broad outline of its case and to indicate who it may call as witnesses. OneWorld will meet the jury Thursday to discuss its rebuttal.

Teams beaten in the repechages are eliminated from the competition. But with the jury prepared to consider whether OneWorld should be disqualified, those teams would inevitably remain pending the hearing's outcome.

A decision against OneWorld could also affect teams previously eliminated, allowing them to argue they had been prejudiced by OneWorld's actions.

OneWorld has promised to vigorously defend both the protest and the Arbitration Panel application, which is not likely to be heard before the new year.

"The issues raised by the New York Yacht Club and Yacht Club Punta Ala (Prada) are not new and have already been dealt with by the Panel,'' OneWorld said in a statement.

"Raising them will serve no purpose beyond galvanizing the Seattle team to fight and win on the water where yacht racing belongs.''

The key to the hearing is the legal status of former OneWorld Operations Manager Sean Reeves, on whose lengthy affidavit the Stars & Stripes and Prada case is largely based.

Reeves has been placed under a restraining order by the Federal Court at Seattle which, in September, found him in breach of employment and confidentiality agreements with OneWorld.