Preparing for his fourth America’s Cup campaign, Andy Maloney finds himself in a new situation.
A senior member of the Emirates Team New Zealand sailing team, Maloney is helping to guide the next generation of potential Kiwi America’s Cup athletes.
In an unusual move, the team have brought sailing interns into their set-up, with an initial group of young female athletes invited to join the team and get familiar with the environment. That group includes Serena Woodall, Stella Bilger, Aimee Bright, Sofia Higgott and Helena Sanderson.
Speaking to the Herald, Maloney said the decision to begin an internship programme for sailors stemmed from a discussion between management and senior members of the sailing team.
“They’re from a different generation than a lot of us within the sailing team at Team New Zealand, which is why we thought the idea of an internship was a really good one,” Maloney said.
“It’s something that we haven’t done within the sailing team before. We’ve run a couple trials, but the internship, it’s more based off the idea similar to what Dan [Bernasconi] would do within the design team when there’s designers or engineers that come out of university and he really doesn’t know them personally from a bar of soap.
“So it’s a really good opportunity to get to know the different people, see how they operate, and for them to get to experience the team as well and to get a feeling if it’s somewhere they would want to work as well in the future.”
Bernasconi and the design team have been running a similar programme for the past decade, with their first intern – Elise Beavis – working in the team full-time as a performance engineer.
Over the past 10 years, Bernasconi estimates they have had about 25 interns come through the doors across a range of engineering disciplines during university holidays, with 10 continuing into full-time contracts and three still with the team. They have another six this year.
“We usually take either students who are just about to start their fourth year at uni or have just finished their fourth year,” Benasconi said.
“It’s a really valuable way for us to do a very long interview, you know. We get a 10-week-long interview and find out if it’s someone that would fit really well in the team, and if they’re going to be able to contribute to our performance.”
For the current sailing team interns, it’s the first step in preparing them for future opportunities, with Maloney indicating the hope was at least one of the five would go on to earn a place in Team NZ’s Women’s America’s Cup team in Naples in 2027.
The internship sees the sailors working within the team and upskilling on the simulator, with the intention to get them sailing an AC40 in one-design mode, the same set-up used to contest the Women’s and Youth America’s Cup.
While it’s the first time such a programme has been run, Maloney said it was not a direct response to Grant Dalton’s admission that the Youth and Women’s America’s Cup teams did not perform as well as hoped in Barcelona last year.
“This is just one small step in the process of bringing a Women’s AC team together and this is what we thought was a priority at this stage. We don’t know any of these girls, so it takes a little bit longer to figure out who we should bring into that group from this generation of sailors. It’s just the first part in the process, but yeah, there’ll be plenty more to come,” Maloney said.
“This has been a really cool new element to this campaign that I’ve never been involved with since I joined the team in Bermuda. I’ve got to remind myself every once in a while how young I felt joining the team back in Bermuda, but I was a lot older than all these sailors are.
“You’ve got to keep reminding yourself that and they are very young, but they’re incredibly talented and it’s really cool to see the potential and their future is very bright with the team, for sure.”
Christopher Reive joined the Herald sports team in 2017, bringing the same versatility to his coverage as he does to his sports viewing habits.