Kiwi fans line the canal at the America's Cup Port in Valencia as Team New Zealand head out. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Kiwi fans line the canal at the America's Cup Port in Valencia as Team New Zealand head out. Photo / Mark Mitchell
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KEY POINTS:
Team New Zealand won the race for public attention in their first America's Cup outing in Valencia - attracting more TV viewers than the All Blacks.
Around 220,000 tuned in to watch the yachties between 1am and 2am yesterday.
The first hour of the All Blacks' nailbiting Tri-Nationsclash against South Africa drew a smaller average audience - 218,600 tuned in.
AGB Nielsen Media Research calculates its figures at 2am, meaning results for the entire duration were unavailable last night.
Even demand on the national grid suggested plenty of New Zealanders were up with their TVs and lights on.
Transpower reported demand was up during the matches - although it was hard to tell if it was due to the sport or the cold snap.
Despite a general decline in the number of people watching rugby, the game tends to be a ratings winner. In 2005, the Lions vs All Blacks tests took three spots in the top 10 most watched one-off shows of the year. The first test on Sky was the most watched of the series, attracting 680,000 viewers.
Still, the numbers for yachting and rugby look slim when compared with another sport - dancing. This year's Dancing With the Stars final was watched by 876,000.
In Valencia, a big crowd of flag-waving supporters lined the docks to farewell Emirates Team NZ, who after a promising start lost to the Swiss team, Alinghi, by 35 seconds.
Big crowds on the water also made a mark.
During yesterday's first race the biggest challenge was how to navigate through the wash of the massive fleet of spectator boats. More than 800 craft, from dinghies to huge corporate hospitality superyachts, crowded on to the course.
The wash from all the movement added to the already choppy conditions after the summer sea breeze picked up early in the day.
"We hadn't been in that sort of 'washing machine' for the start before," said Alinghi grinder Matt Welling. The crew took the rare step of practising a pre-start dial-up as soon as they got out to the race course. "We tried to get in close to the spectator fleet during the Louis Vuitton but we couldn't do pre-starts," Welling said.
Team NZ, on the other hand, got used to the wash and were said to have modified NZL92 to deal with choppy conditions.
