It was a bold and smart move to put young video games champions - and great sailors - on the job rather than old experienced salties such as Sir Ben or James Spithill. This is a totally new sport, where immediate reactivity is the key and not the planned tactics.
Credit should also be given to the other half of the reason allowing for Team NZ's strong position in the Cup today: New Zealanders' amazing (and unique) faculty to think outside the box.
The cycling system has shown it is both perfectly viable, safe and performs better than traditional grinding pedestals.
Glenn Ashby's wing trimming system is another stroke of ingenuity.
Ashby may be an Australian, but the Kiwi capacity for relentlessly providing innovative solutions to old problems is something the world has seen in the past through the deeds of legendary New Zealanders such as Bruce McLaren, Sir Peter Blake, Sir Edmund Hillary and many others.
I am sure we will keep seeing this unique national creativity in the years to come.
Go New Zealand! Not only the team, but the country.
Bring the Cup back where it belongs - and immediately change the nationality rule. That's something that, in hindsight, was a mistake not to do in 2000. If you win and do so, you will keep it for a while!
Bruno Trouble
-Three times French skipper in the America's Cup, creator of the Louis Vuitton Cup in 1982. Head of the America's Cup press organisation for 20 years (1983 to 2003).
- An America's Cup Hall of Fame member and presented in 2003 with the New Zealand Order of Merit.
- The Trouble familly owns TARA (ex Seamaster), Sir Peter Blake's boat which will be arriving in Auckland in a few days.
