Dream ends for de Angelis, but the love remains

By MICHELE HEWITSON

This is the way an America's Cup challenge ends. Not with a bang, definitely not with a whimper, but with the sound of a torrential Auckland summer's downfall drilling down on the roof of the Prada base and all but drowning the quiet words of the skipper of the defeated Italian syndicate.

Outside, the inflatables strain and rub up against each other, producing a curious grumbling.

A break in the weather gives Francesco de Angelis the chance to wander outside and show us what the end of an adventure looks like.

When Prada set up camp here six years ago - the first time Auckland hosted the cup - the skyline was bristling with the rigging of the big boats. Now, he says, one by one the rigs come down. The big trucks pull up to take away the paraphernalia of a challenge.

To his right, its bottom swathed in grey cloth, is the boat. The Prada rig will remain part of the skyline for, de Angelis shrugs, "maybe one month".

De Angelis' America's Cup is over. It finished on Tuesday when the Prada team, the defending Louis Vuitton Cup challengers, straggled back into the Viaduct Harbour to the sounds of boat horns and the supporters who called, "We love you, Prada".

To the skipper, those words must have sounded like a lament drifting across the water. The pictures said all that he didn't. There was the Prada boat, its crew in grey, no one talking, staring out to sea. There was de Angelis, his brow furrowed, his mouth downturned. Was he wiping away a tear?

There were more than a few teary-eyed Aucklanders on Tuesday. Because with Prada's defeat ends, at least for the moment, a peculiar love affair that has sprung up between the city hosting the cup and the Italian challengers. And the man at the helm has been at the heart of that affair.

De Angelis claims he doesn't really know the secret of the magic. In part, he hazards, Auckland fell in love with Prada because they did so well in the last challenger series. Or, perhaps, because "we are always very low profile, working hard, without too much talk".

From anyone else involved in the game of one-upmanship that is the America's Cup, you might suspect that this is a little jibe at some of the less-than-gentlemanly behaviour associated with the Holy Grail of ocean racing.

But de Angelis has long been known as the gentleman - his nickname is Il Barone - of the challenge.

He concedes that he is quiet, but says with a grin, "I don't know where the gentleman comes from. People who work next to me might have a different opinion. Yes."

He is a strict skipper. "I think I devote myself totally for the mission and I expect the same from other people. And I still believe in values and the ethic of work, so I expect people to behave."

In stark contrast is the owner of the syndicate, Patrizio Bertelli, who has been known to make quite a lot of noise. What was his reaction to Prada's loss?

"Oh well, basically it's not happy, and I know that this time for him is to reflect on a lot of things. He'll have his view."

De Angelis is a measured sort of gentleman. He may have reason to be. One of the many rumours floating about the Viaduct is that Bertelli has video cameras placed around the Prada base so that he can look and listen in when the fancy takes him.

Anyone looking in on Tuesday night would have seen a crew in no mood to party - or to drown its sorrows.

"They didn't need a hangover. No. Would that fix anything? We came back here and spent some time with the team and then that was it. It was not a night to party."

Now is the time, says de Angelis, to think about what went wrong. "The experience is always important because we are learning from the mistakes."

To learn from the mistakes means you have to be given another chance to put that learning into effect. Will he get another shot? "Well, this I don't know. As an athlete, your life is related to what you produce."

He has a scientific mind - he was studying to become a geneticist before he became a professional sailor - and likes to know how things work, and why.

But if he is worrying about his future, de Angelis is not about to let it show. He would very much like to stay on in Auckland through the America's Cup races.

"We want to make sure that when we leave this place, we leave knowing all that could be learned here."

HE ALSO has a superstitious mind. But no more, he says, than "I think like every sailor". He has been known to wear the same shirt and sunglasses (not Prada issue) for every race.

When he was voted the second sexiest man (Ricky Martin came first) in a New Zealand women's magazine, he said it was a psychological ploy. "That was to embarrass me, I guess."

He is slightly embarrassed that in a photograph of him, taken on Black Tuesday, he appears to be wiping away a tear.

"Which wasn't the case. In fact, the moment of the day was like a longer bleeding. We knew that the clock was ticking and the wind wasn't coming. So that was the hard moment. That day we were not in control of our destiny and when you reach that point, it is never a good day."

On the wall inside the Prada base are photographs of happier days. Here's the boat, Luna Rossa, bathed in a golden light. Here's the boys on the steps of Parliament, in their sharp Italian suits, bright white open-necked shirts, sexy sunglasses. In the foreground is de Angelis, a smile of contentment on his face, leaning in to hongi a kaumatua wearing a feather cloak.

This is how much New Zealand loves the gentlemanly loser. In 2000, he became an honorary officer of the Order of Merit. He said at the time that he thought such awards existed in Italy, "but we didn't get any".

He looks up at the now sodden, faded and tattered flags hanging above the base. They look as dispirited as the faces of Prada did last Tuesday.

But it's hard to dampen the spirits of the second sexiest man around.

De Angelis stands on the deck overlooking the city and laughs at the weather because he can't think of a single thing he doesn't love about New Zealand.

If you'd asked him "in the beginning, I would have answered 'the rain'. But then you get accustomed to it."

Auckland has become accustomed to having de Angelis and the Prada team around too.

This has been what you might call a requited sort of affair.

nzherald.co.nz/americascup

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