America's Cup: No nerves from Team NZ helmsman Peter Burling as history beckons

Emirates Team helmsman Peter Burling gives thumbs up after trouncing Oracle Team USA. Photo/Sander van der Borch

With America's Cup glory just one win away and recent history still haunting his team, you could excuse Team NZ helmsman Peter Burling a few jitters.

But just moments after taking his team to match point against Oracle Team USA in Bermuda, the cool, calm and collected customer showed no signs of sweaty palms on the wheel.

At just 26, the reigning Olympic 49er champion stands on the brink of sailing immortality, but continues to preach a sermon of constant improvement, just as he has throughout this rollercoaster campaign.

Just 24 hours after dropping their first race in the final series, Emirates Team NZ steadied any speed wobbles with two dominant performances that suggested, unlike San Francisco 2013, there will be no way back for Oracle this time.

"We showed today that we're a pretty tough bunch," he told a post-race press conference. "We got asked some questions yesterday and I feel like we answered them with our performance on the water."

After earning a reputation for his shaky performances in the start-box in his early races, Burling was all over rival Jimmy Spithill today, pinning Oracle deep and leaving them standing in the second race.

This dramatic change in fortunes led to accusations that the Kiwi maestro must have been tanking previously.

"I don't know how you answer that," shrugged Burling. "We do feel like we improve really fast.

"We've got a great bunch of people in the team, across the design office and the shore team. If we need to make any changes, it's impressive how quickly we can turn things around.

"In the week prior to this weekend, we did some pretty good changes to the boat. As always, our shore team did an amazing job giving us a tool that we could throw around again today and yesterday.

"I'm just a small part of a massive team, but really happy to be contributing the way we did today."

With TV coverage featuring heat-rate monitors hooked up to crews, Burling's pulse has barely breached the red zone for the six weeks.

In cricketing parlace, he has played every situation with a straight bat, but may have knicked a cheeky boundary over the slip cordon at the start of today's second race, as he left Spithill in his dust.

"At a certain moment, you make some movement with your arms, something like 'goodbye, see you at the finish line'?" he was asked afterwards. "Am I wrong?"

"I think I actually made the comment to the boys 'it's a bit easier if you do it like that'," deadpanned Burling.

"Jimmy was pretty close to getting us in a start like that yesterday and we felt that, if we pulled off the manoeuvre with them sitting two hulls, we had a pretty good opportunity to get the hook.

"We were really happy with how everyone executed on the boat. It's something you practice, you have plans, but to execute and pull it off, it's full credit to everyone on board."

With just one win needed, Burling was reminded of past failures and the pressure of the moment.

"To be honest, it excites us," he insisted. "We really enjoy that pressure and also the amount of fans that have got behind us now - we really appreciate that support from back home.

"Our fans are absolutely amazing. The amount of flags we see when we drive in here and when we dock off just blows away."

"We're really excited about going out there tomorrow and putting it all on the line again."

Burling was adamant nothing would change tonight in terms of preparation.

"Everyone's pretty fresh and we've put a lot of thought into how we want to approach this.

"We'll go back and have a look at the data and the footage, as we do every night, and review everything to see if there's any areas we can improve on the boat and just keep pushing forward."
"We feel like we're on such a steep part of the learning curve."