A marketer's dream is coming true

New Zealand got the sort of international exposure tourism that marketers were hoping for from the start of the challenger series for the America's Cup.

Newspapers in Australia, Europe and America weighed in with a stack of stories focusing on the country and the cup.

The Union-Tribune in San Diego, the site of the last America's Cup challenge, says the challenging syndicates agree there is more enthusiasm for the races in Auckland than there was in San Diego.

"They say Auckland is far better prepared for hosting the races - and throwing a grand party - than San Diego was," reports travel editor Alison Da Rosa.

In an article, "New Zealand's cup brims over with beautiful views, friendly folk," she says New Zealand is home to "scenery so breathtaking it stirs deep human emotion."

"New Zealand is a wild, rugged country built on volcanoes, studded with lakes and ancient forests, soothed by acres of rolling green pastureland, energised by cosmopolitan cities and embraced by more miles of coastline than the continental United States."

Across the Tasman, the Sydney Morning Herald put aside traditional trans-Tasman rivalry. "Auckland, the self-proclaimed City of Sails, has embraced the role of host nation with unprecedented fervour, having erected an entire village and foreshore development for the staging of the two most coveted cup events in world sailing."

The Los Angeles Times, in a piece sourced from the Washington Post, asked whether the regatta could recapture sports fans the way it did at the pinnacle of its popularity - when the Australians ended the 132-year American winning streak in 1983 only to have Dennis Conner take it back in 1987. But court battles over catamarans and lacklustre racing in 1992 have tarnished the cup, it says.

"Can this regatta capture sports fans the way the 1987 event in Australia did? That remains to be seen," says the LA Times. "The pieces seem in place."

For one thing, Auckland promises better winds and a variety of weather to make racing interesting.

But, warns the LA Times: "Whoever wins the challenger trials may wish he hadn't. Team New Zealand was so far ahead of everyone else at San Diego in 1995 it lost one race on the water all season."

The New York Times, in an article headed "Smooth Waters for the Challengers," said that as the skippers gathered to sail for the right to challenge for the cup there seemed little of the "verbal duels" that have usually marked the start of racing.

The Washington Post remarked on the crowds of "sailing mad New Zealanders" who had flocked to the cup village "at the foot of Auckland's busy business district" last weekend.

"But the crowds were back to work this morning [Monday] and only a few hundred spectator craft dotted the water as the challengers filed out of the basin."