Mike Hosking: Dalton is the real hero
Today we salute Team NZ’s amazing comeback tale with Grant Dalton at its centre, and all that Cup will bring
We have the prospect of another wonderful day in the ongoing joyous and everchanging story of the America’s Cup. It is parade day.
We don’t do parades often, which is a good indicator in and of itself that the America’s Cup is up there, if in fact it doesn’t surpass the Rugby World Cup.
But unlike the World Cup this is bigger than sport, in fact sport in many respects is but a fairly minor player in the overall Cup package.
The America’s Cup is really about business. It’s about jobs, and infrastructure, marketing and growth.
Every one of us directly or indirectly benefits now, out of what those guys did in Bermuda.
The cup this afternoon will sail around the Viaduct, the very Viaduct that looks the way it does, and is the magnet it is, because of the America’s Cup when it was here last time.
One major decision they have to make in the not too distant future, is where to house the operations for the next regatta, given the places they held the last one are now full . . . full because of the expansion they created by winning it in the first place. Which is why these guys are heroes.
As always you can single out some and run the risk of missing out others just as worthy.
But surely the real hero in all of this is Grant Dalton, or as I would have it if I ran the country, Sir Grant Dalton.
Without him we would not be here today. No Dalton, no Cup, it’s that simple. He is a study in determination, dedication, hard work and success.
At least half the people lapping up today as a day of celebration and victory would have at some point written Dalton off.
They would have been part of a not insignificant group who decided after San Francisco that the America’s Cup was a waste of time, that our days in it were over.
And they would have bought into a lot of the rumour and innuendo around the camp and its operation.
They would have seen Dean Barker as a scapegoat, and they would have thought of the government investment in the operation as a waste of time and money. Fast forward a handful of years and isn’t it amazing what a new boat, new team and a victory can do for the outlook on matters?
But every day of every month of every year in the ensuing period when we weren’t looking and didn’t care, Dalton and co were rebuilding.
And it is those days and decisions and risks that are worth the attention and reward of days like today.
They didn’t sign up like the others to the Oracle plan, hence it’s back here in four years time.
They didn’t sign up to the boats, or the Oracle Formula 1-style vision.
All of which made for exciting viewing if you liked watching a boat go fast in a straight line.
I can’t help but think a tacking duel still beats 40 knots downwind.
Who knows what comes out of this victory, what sort of boats, the course, the schedule, the rules, and as always there will be the scrapping, maybe the lawyers get called in. But make no mistake this was a victory born out of desperation and despair.
This was a victory that most would never have had a chance at tasting given they would never have been at the start line, having walked away.
But that’s why we love sport, that’s why sport is the only thing outside a major natural disaster or a war that can unite a country.
So today is not just about welcoming sport’s oldest trophy home. It’s about celebrating a spirit of fighting that is too often missing. A never-say-die attitude. Some of the most extraordinary decision-making and risk-taking we’ve ever seen, and ingenuity in terms of R and D that surely is unique to a country like ours at the bottom of the world.
Perhaps most excitingly of all, today is also a celebration of all that is still to come.
Every one of us directly or indirectly benefits now, out of what those guys did in Bermuda.