Need for speed

It is increasingly clear that the New Zealand gene pool is subject to a primordial drive to churn out softly spoken, modest world-beaters. Emirates Team New Zealand helmsman Peter Burling is the most recent example of this curious evolutionary bent of ours, but the DNA has a long history stretching back to Sir Ed Hillary and Lord Ernest Rutherford. Speak softly – but help split the atom, conquer the toughest mountain or, as of this week, bring home the world’s oldest competitive sporting trophy. Also in the limelight this week was another low-key, unaffected world-beater, Lorde, whose second album topped the US Billboard charts – a musical Everest/America’s Cup equivalent. The Black Ferns won the women’s World Sevens crown and were as graciously humble as ever. The All Blacks continued rampaging over the best rugby players the British and Irish can muster, to muted, matter-of-fact acknowledgement by our players and coaches, as the world’s media devotes columns and columns to analysis of how our tiny population maintains world domination of the sport.

What a joy, in the midst of our – necessarily – divisive election year, to have so much success to celebrate. Best of all, success New Zealand-style is, almost without exception, elite achievement made possible only by our egalitarian ideals of inclusivity and diversity.

Those who write off the America’s Cup success as a “rich man’s sport” haven’t been paying attention to how we do it. It begins with a simple love of the outdoors, the sea and sailing. Here, anyone can sail. You don’t need to own a yacht to join a crew. Children can start on affordable small craft. Yes, the America’s Cup is probably the most expensive sport in the world, short of Sir Richard Branson’s space hobby, but New Zealand’s contribution to it has grown out of everyman sailing prowess, not out of wealth. It was our grass-roots yachting passion and talent that attracted the America’s Cup money in the first place – not the other way around.

Into the cauldron, next, went boat-building expertise. We have excelled at this for decades, but America’s Cup participation cemented our reputation for marine design. The latest boat harnessed New Zealand’s wider design excellence by drawing from other engineering spheres. ETNZ’s innovation, replacing handcranked grinder power with bicycle power, was just one of the game changers. The hydraulics design whiz was recruited from a food-processing plant. The woman responsible for the boat’s ground-breaking wing design was 22, barely out of university.

The lack of funds is, perversely, a strength. Unlike Oracle,

ETNZ couldn’t pelt each problem with money, but had to use imagination. From design to construction to IT, the plan was to pretty much jettison all orthodoxies. Even our espionage was state of the art. ETNZ quietly recruited a Bermuda-resident French couple with sailing and engineering expertise to monitor Oracle’s development on the water. No skulduggery required: just a discreet watching brief from the shore, which wasn’t rumbled by Oracle till late in the challenge run-up.

However high-tech and innovative, it was still a boat that had to be sailed. Here, Burling became the latest exponent of one of our lesser-remarked national preoccupations: New Zealanders are speed freaks. Always have been. Bill Hamilton hastened water transport for the world by creating the jetboat. Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck follows Kiwi Bill Pickering, a key figure in the US space race. John Britten’s mechanical flair sped up the motorcycle. Jack Lovelock became the fastest human over 1500m in the 1930s. We’re only just getting to grips with this streak in our nature, with help from movies about our speedsters, such as Bruce McLaren (Formula 1 champ) and

Burt Munro (under-1000cc motorcycle land-speed record holder). Our tacit ethos has long been: speak softly but go like stink.

The muted Kiwi burr yields to the blur on the track – John Walker, Peter Snell, Nick Willis, Murray Halberg; on the water – swimmer Danyon Loader, rowers Mahe Drysdale, Lisa Carrington, Eric Murray, Hamish Bond and the Evers-Swindell twins, kayakers Ian Ferguson and Paul McDonald, the boardsailing Kendalls; on two wheels – cyclist Sarah Ulmer and speedway rider Ivan Mauger; on four wheels – Chris Amon, Scott Dixon, Possum Bourne and Hayden Paddon; cricket paceman Sir Richard Hadlee and downhill skier Annelise Coberger. We’ve even pioneered it using elastic, through bungy jumper AJ Hackett.

So, just this once, let’s gloat a bit. We’re quiet, but we’re clever and we’re fast. And if anyone doubts we’re quietly resourceful: ETNZ’s Bermuda base was sited near a venue playing persistently loud music, so staff improvised with boxes of a sponsor’s donated product as sound-proofing. It was Weet-Bix.

Success New Zealand-style is, almost without exception, elite achievement made possible only by our egalitarian ideals of inclusivity and diversity.