NZ pedal their way to brink of America’s Cup glory
HAMILTON, Bermud a : Emirates Team New Zealand will take to Bermuda’s Great Sound on Monday with a mission, to finally wipe out the hurt inflicted on the sports- mad country by Oracle Team USA in the America’s Cup.
But while leading 6-1 in the firstto-seven final should make victory a near certainty, the Kiwis are not complacent.
“We are not taking anything for granted,” New Zealand helmsman Peter Burling said on Sunday after coolly steering his space-age 50- foot (15 metre) catamaran to yet another win over the team’s nemesis, Oracle Team USA’s skipper Jimmy Spithill.
It was Spithill and the team bankrolled by Oracle founder Larry Ellison who in 2013 turned an 8-1 deficit against New Zealand into a 9- 8 victory and a successful defence of the oldest trophy in international sport.
Burling, who at only 26 could also unseat Spithill as the youngest ever person to helm a winning America’s Cup team, has exuded a disarming calm on and off the water.
He won Olympic gold in Rio last year in the 49er skiff class with fellow crew member Blair Tuke and has brought a youthful confidence to New Zealand’s campaign to regain the “Auld Mug”, which was first won by the schooner “America” in 1851.
I f New Zealand triumph, many will put it down to the revolutionary “cycling” system developed to power the hydraulics needed to control the catamaran’s foils, which lift it out of the water, and the vast “wing” sail which drives it along.
Their “cyclors”, including an Olympic cycling medallist, have kept their heads down throughout the contest, pedalling furiously to provide enough oil in the system to allow the boat to perform almost balletic pirouette manoeuvres on the water.