KEY POINTS:
Team New Zealand's foray into the US court system seems sure to spark some unfavourable comment about more money being spent on lawyers in the world's most litigious sport.
The America's Cup has tacked and gybed its way into the courts before - notably Sir Michael Fay's 'Big
Boat' challenge of the 1980s. At first glance, Emirates Team NZ's efforts to recoup what is thought to be $50m will look to many like just another line lashing the Cup to a legal pontoon, helping to keep this event tied to the dock.
It runs a wee bit deeper than that this time. The legal stoush currently delaying the 2009 regatta (which could be called, in newspaper headline terms 'Billionaires Butt Heads', with its double meaning...) sees Ernesto Bertarelli of Alinghi and Larry Ellison of Oracle locked together in a legal battle for power.
But New Zealand is a small country. We produce many of the best sailors in the world but don't have the Bertarellis and the Ellisons to bankroll our syndicates. 'Rich man's plaything' is not a factor when it comes to Team NZ, in spite of the background benefactor presence of another billionaire, Matteo de Nora.
No, our team has public money invested in it and a huge dollop of public interest and investment of an emotional nature - even if Team NZ are at pains to point out that neither taxpayers' nor sponsors' money is being used for the court action.
Pound for pound, the public interest in Team New Zealand here outweighs that by the public of Switzerland or the US in their America's Cup teams.
So, 'the mouse that roared' has to rear up on its hind legs when it thinks it is being disadvantaged otherwise we become simply that mouse that got floored.
But, again, it runs deeper than that. The rivalry, some would say enmity, that emerged between Alinghi and Team NZ - and pretty much Alinghi and everybody, really - in Valencia was tangible. Fair enough, Alinghi team members and supporters can point to some pretty nasty and abusive behaviour by some New Zealanders when Alinghi took the America's Cup and some Kiwis, hands on hearts, will indeed recall that that was not their finest moment.
But Alinghi's attempt to control-freak the Cup was a new dimension - and it fair got up the noses of the New Zealanders, and not just those in Team NZ - like the losers' press conference.
Team NZ were majorly miffed when they found out (second-hand) that Alinghi had organised a winner's press conference at the same time as one for the losers - flying in the face of America's Cup tradition and in that of all sport where the victors and vanquished share the same space, congratulate each other and face the media together; an arrangement redolent with the dignity of sport. The implication from the losers' press conference was that, with so many Kiwi sailors on board both yachts, the Swiss did not want New Zealand's America's Cup expertise to overshadow them. Perhaps the best illustration of Alinghi's crushing control was America's Cup TV (ACTV), which sent pictures from Valencia around the world and which was controlled by Alinghi through their management company. There were Kiwis everywhere in ACTV. And watchers. Always the watchers. The Kiwi commentators, including the renowned sailor and comments man Peter Lester, were under threat of dismissal for being "biased" towards Team NZ - a bias no one else could detect.
On one occasion, Lester was rapped over the knuckles for talking about Russell Coutts. As I wrote in a July story: "We do not talk about Russell Coutts on ACTV, apparently. Not since he left Alinghi."
Then came the day of the infamous sight of a man up Alinghi's mast, quickening thoughts the defender might have breached class rules. The Team NZ protest was dismissed but suspicions remained. When the incident occurred, the ACTV boat which followed closely behind, filming the action, was told to drop back.
Later, ACTV were cutting a highlights package for broadcast around the world. Orders from the top arrived. A chunk of the mast sequence in the package was pruned, leaving a package which made Alinghi appear to be not quite so seriously in question.
This has nothing to do with why Team NZ has decided to take court action against Alinghi. That is down to pure nuts and bolts matters - like money.
But it is a reminder that those who try and make the rules, and even bend them, can also be subject to the same kind of pedantic precision. Team NZ has been very head-below-the-ramparts in recent months. It's easy to understand why but it is also a shame.
In Grant Dalton, they have a leader much loved by Kiwis and whose work-hard-don't-shirk and tell-it-like-it-is persona embodies down-home qualities many Kiwis recognise. I've been around a fair while and can't think of many people in sport who have managed to manage people and business quite so well and yet have such a touch with public and media.
That's the only slight criticism of Team NZ in this whole court business - if they were afraid they'd be perceived as joining the money-flinging, power-grabbing billionaires' set, they could have let Dalton loose on us ahead of the fact.
This incarnation of Team NZ has successfully moved on from the spectacular failure of the previous regime.
Sometimes the best time to gather friends is in adversity; sometimes all that is needed to garner public support is a word in our ears from someone we trust - and then we might celebrate together the potential arrival of $50m in Swiss francs.
