Emirates Team NZ boat hits the water after toppling during America's Cup racing off Bermuda. Photo / America's Cup
Emirates Team NZ boat hits the water after toppling during America's Cup racing off Bermuda. Photo / America's Cup
Where to from here for Emirates Team New Zealand?
The cartwheel from Aotearoa today was one of those dramatic capsizes that, while seemingly catastrophic, is not uncommon in sailing.
Every sailor, from an early age, will have experienced the challenge of a turn-away from the wind and a nose-dive cartwheel.
In catamarans and skiffs it is something that is always a risk and it's a feeling, when it happens, that is both exhilarating and stomach-sickening at the same time.
The experienced sailors onboard Aotearoa will move on from this pretty quickly.
Peter, Blair, Glen, Andy and Josh will all have done this on many different types of yachts over many years.
However, for Joe Sullivan (a rower) and Simon van Velthoven (a cyclist) this may have been a new experience - and one they will not forget in a hurry!
How you deal with it is to laugh it off and just put it in the basket alongside of all the other mishaps you have experienced as a sailor over many years.
Sure the stakes are higher, and there are a lot more people watching in this situation, but in the end, it is just a yacht race and sometimes you get slammed down.
What you then do is get back up, and go sailing again.
It's another learning opportunity. The high risk bear away they had to do was a result of getting "owned" by Team BAR in the pre-start.
Unpacking how they let that happen is the key thing so they can avoid being forced into that situation again.
So, while for us watching it was heart in the mouth stuff, for elite high performance sailors it is just one of those things that you will have a good laugh about and slam it into the big basket called experience.
- Mark Orams is a professor at the School of Sport and Recreation, AUT University
