Prada sweat on a secret weapon

Prada will try anything to beat Team New Zealand next time around - even putting their fate in the hands of a rugby trainer. SUZANNE McFADDEN reports.

At the crack of dawn, a bunch of buffed Italian sailors zig-zag through an Auckland City park, tuning up for a race that is still two years away.

Such is the determination of this Prada team to win the America's Cup next time, they are already out training every morning at sunrise.

After being crushed by Team New Zealand in last year's cup, the Italians are going all out to go one better in 2003.

They have called on a South African sports star to train their tough guys to be tougher.

Vernon Neville - a former Springbok aspirant and champion clay pigeon shooter - is in return learning to be a cup yachtie.

Neville can often be seen at Victoria Park, in the heart of Auckland City, teaching the Italians how to pass rugby balls and netballs.

His wife, Desree, gives expert advice - she was a midcourter in the Proteas, the South African national netball team.

The couple have swapped their sporting lives in Cape Town for Auckland and Punta Ala over the next two years, in pursuit of an old silver ewer they had barely heard of.

Vernon Neville was a physical trainer for top Italian rugby side Rovigo when Prada's skipper, Francesco de Angelis, phoned him.

"They had heard about me in Italy, but I hadn't really heard about them," Neville said.

"I also had an offer to train the Italian national rugby team, but I chose Prada.

"My family and friends at home can't understand why. They know nothing about the America's Cup."

Desree Neville chips in with the real reason: "Basically, it was because your wife was tired of winter ... I liked the idea of three years of nothing but summers.

"But really, I know how much Vernon loves a challenge."

It would be fair to say that Neville is a sports fanatic. He competed for South Africa at the world clay pigeon shooting championships when he was 18, but his passion was rugby.

Eight years ago he was a promising flanker for Natal, when a serious head injury abruptly ended his playing career.

"I had a series of concussions and the last one was pretty severe," he said. "They told me I could never play contact sport again."

So he turned to coaching, and was drawn to the fitness side of the sport. He set up gyms specialising in sports performance and started training South African rugby teams.

He even worked with the South African netball team - his wife among them - for the 1999 world championships in New Zealand. The 30-year-old is now trying sailing for the first time. The Prada guys are teaching Neville the art of grinding - every day he sails the silver Luna Rossas on the Hauraki Gulf.

"I want to be out there. I want to see what they go through every day," he said.

"I can listen to my body and understand whether I'm pushing them too hard or not."

Neville starts every day at 5 am. He sets up the morning's rigorous workout with netballs and rugby balls in the park, or in the extraordinary gymnasium they have set up in their Auckland home, the Heritage Hotel.

"Rugby is a walk in the park compared to this," he said.

"Some days I ask myself why I'm doing this - the hours are very long, the work is very hard.

"But this job is full of challenges. Sailing an America's Cup boat every day without any racing can get pretty boring, so I try to bring in a bit of variation with netball and rugby drills. They all enjoy the new games. But they have tried to dribble the rugby ball."

Desree, a secondary school biology teacher, is checking out New Zealand's netball scene and has already been in touch with Silver Ferns coach Yvonne Willering.

But she does not want to play - she wants to learn the New Zealand style and coach here.

She is disappointed she has to hide her Silver Ferns uniform from her new friends.

"The first day I went to the gym with the sailors, I wore a Silver Ferns shirt I swapped with [former captain] Lesley Nicol," she said. "All the guys gave me filthy looks, so Vernon suggested I didn't wear it again for a while."

Now she wears the silver and red of Prada.

Herald Online feature: America's Cup