Dalton again blows up over new format
Team New Zealand boss Grant Dalton has taken another swipe at the controversial new racing format of the next America’s Cup following the release of the draw for the 2017 event in Bermuda.
America’s Cup organisers yesterday unveiled the full schedule for next year’s regatta, with Team New Zealand set to open their campaign against French syndicate Groupama on May 26. But the first big test of their competitiveness will be the following day, when the Kiwis meet defenders Oracle Team USA during the round robin phase of the qualifiers.
That Team NZ are meeting Oracle so early in the regatta remains a bone of contention with Dalton.
The qualifying round is a controversial new addition to the America’s Cup programme. Traditionally, the event has been held over two stages — the Louis Vuitton Challenger Series and the Cup match proper — with only the victor of the challenger elimination series taking on the defenders.
But through the introduction of the qualifiers, Oracle have engineered themselves an opportunity to test themselves against each of the challengers ahead of the Cup match.
Dalton said it is a blatant attempt from the defenders to further stack the deck in their favour.
“I guess the strange thing for people, and really for us too, is that Oracle is in those first rounds and that’s no more complicated than them trying to increase their chances of defending by matching themselves up against the opposition.
“I don’t know whether that happens in any other sport in the world where the finalist gets to play in the rounds, and it certainly didn’t happen when Team New Zealand had the America’s Cup.
“It’s certainly heavily biased, and that’s nothing more than the sort of people you’re dealing with in Oracle and trying to do whatever they can to do anything to hold on to it.”
America’s Cup Events Authority CEO Russell Coutts, however, sees his new format as an opportunity for every team to plan their strategies. The top four challengers sail-off for the right to face Oracle in the 35th America’s Cup match. The final will be a best-of-nine match racing series. The winner of the playoffs will take on Oracle in the Cup match. Up to 13 races will be sailed, with the first team to seven points to lift the Auld Mug.
The top four challengers from the qualifying series will advance through to the America’s Cup playoffs where they will battle to face Oracle in the 35th America’s Cup match.
“It will be a fantastic spectacle,” he said. “All the America’s Cup teams now know who they will line up with in the Louis Vuitton America’s Cup Qualifiers, allowing them to plan their race strategies for each of their double round robin races.”
Dalton also criticised the arrangement between Oracle and Team Japan, headed by former Team NZ skipper Dean Barker, who left the Kiwi syndicate last year following a public falling out with his old boss.
The Japanese syndicate is based in Bermuda, where it works closely alongside Oracle, sharing ideas, resources and data.
“They’re the same team. Obviously if Oracle can get the Japanese fast enough to win the challenger series, then they’ll win for sure because they’ll just wind the dial back down.
“Effectively their second America’s Cup boat doesn’t have Oracle stuck on the side of it, it has Japan stuck on the side of it. They are one team. So their way of trying to control the game and stack the deck, is to try and use their surrogate team as such to try to knock other challengers out.” want to keep coming back and getting more.”
Ah, yes, the winning. It’s certainly doubtful Vukona would have pulled on the singlet for 12 seasons if the side were regularly finishing near the bottom of the ladder, as the Breakers did during his first five-year stint. But it’s unarguable the Breakers never would have enjoyed such a sustained run of success, as they have during his second seven-year term, had Vukona been absent.
Leading teammates through emphatic actions on the court more than rousing words in the locker room, Vukona was integral to each of the four championship banners that will be hanging from the NSEC rafters tomorrow. But such influence merely came naturally.
“It’s not something that you try and force,” Vukona said. “I learnt that pretty quickly from Nenad Vucinic the first time I captained the Tall Blacks — he said I was shit, and he just said, ‘let everything come to you’.
“In this environment, it just allows you to do your own thing and lead in the way you know how to, which is by your actions.”
Vukona is contracted through the end of next season but, with a level of durability that has made him almost impervious to injuries, he wasn’t about to rule out one more milestone in a career full of them.
“Another 300,” he said with a laugh. “Let’s go.”