Distracting Team NZ key to the Auld Mug
Winning the America’s Cup isn’t just about having the fastest boat and the best sailor at the helm.
If only it were that simple. It’s also about having gun lawyers and deep pockets. Particularly when you are defenders, as Emirates Team New Zealand are regularly discovering.
The defender makes the rules, though many are dictated by the Deed of Gift that dates back to 1852, befitting the contest for sport’s oldest trophy.
The challengers push the boundaries and the current crop, headed by Italy’s Luna Rossa, are certainly stirring things up.
The scrap over the loss of the two prime course for public viewing is a classic case with the challengers winning the argument in front of the arbitration panel.
Common sense – not always a strong commodity in the America’s Cup – suggests this matter will get sorted out before the gun fires for the opening race on December 17.
But right now the battle has been doing exactly what the challengers want – soaking up precious Team New Zealand energy at a time when they need to focus on the launch of their second boat, the design that a nation’s hopes rest on.
The challengers have even cleverly hired former Team NZ ace
and multiple Cup winner Brad Butterworth to act on their behalf.
That takes some of the peripheral pressures off them and adds to the weight bearing down on the defenders.
Butterworth certainly hasn’t been on Grant Dalton’s Christmas card list since Dalton took hold of the sinking syndicate in 2003. Then the Auld Mug had been hijacked by high-profile Kiwis in Swiss uniforms, who proved that international sailing was indeed a modern professional sport where
money mattered as much as national allegiances.
Dalton’s long quest to win back the cup eventually found success at Bermuda 2017 where stunning design ingenuity and a new-look crew of young, hungry talent totally dominated.
With the champagne barely dry, Team New Zealand then sailed into the storm that is the reality of staging yachting’s biggest spectacle.
From funding battles to tussles over waterfront infrastructure, it’s been a minefield that’s required more tacks than a beat into a Fremantle headwind did in 1987.
And the Italians have been nipping at their stern all along.
The once cosy relationship now appears shipwrecked.
Luna Rossa publicly criticised the radical boat design they helped evolve, with Team New Zealand determined to revolutionise monohull sailing.
They got into a fight over the wind limits for Auckland 2021, they’ve haggled over various staging costs, and now they’ve had their moment of victory over the two ditched courses.
The arbitration panel has had to deal with 12 issues in the past 22 months.
On top of Team New Zealand’s battles with the challengers has been the emergence of a patent dispute with a Brazilian yacht designer claiming rights to the foil arm systems employed on the AC75, something strenuously denied by the Kiwis.
These are the sort of issues that infuriate the common sports fan though they provide the intrigue that sets the America’s Cup apart.
The New York Supreme Court was a synonymous with the Cup as the New York Yacht Club during their long time in charge, and little has changed.
Don your lifejacket, the choppy seas of the Waitemata¯ Harbour will only get rougher.