Peter Lester: Bennett's weather call on the button

It's all about risk management.

Obviously Alinghi are happy to race because at 3-0 up they can afford the risk of losing.

Team New Zealand can't afford to lose a race on bad luck or a huge windshift.

The risk for the Swiss sailing in light, shifty winds is a lot less - if they sail well they might win anyway or they might get a quirk of the wind and take it.

You can hear it with Brad Butterworth - he keeps saying, "We're happy to go".

It was fascinating and entertaining yesterday.

It was like nautical chess with the pressure being put on the afterguards, and the subtle and not so subtle moves between the two teams and the race committee over delaying the race.

I thought initially race officer Harold Bennett was under a lot of pressure, but the call he made was on the button.

Don't forget he's got his own weather team out there led by a young guy called Matt Davies, one of our Olympic sailors.

He won the youth world championships in the double-handed 420 class, only the second crew we've had to win that, following on from Chris Dickson.

He is knowledgeable and young and he is helping Harold along with a bunch of young guys from the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron's academy programme.

So they are providing the race committee with similar information to what the teams are getting.

I'm sure the committee will come under some heat for the call.

So it means there has been a break of five days, with the fourth race postponed three times.

They haven't competed since the third race last Tuesday.

I reckon the first weekend was brutal on Team New Zealand, some of it was self-imposed, but the effect of that was huge.

Saturday, they lost through reliability, and on Sunday they were beaten tactically.

They're two huge blows to take. Time is a wonderful healer and it does give people time to reflect and regroup.

So you can see why the Alinghi guys want to get it on, they're on a roll.

Now some of that momentum probably has been taken away from them and opened up a small opportunity for Team New Zealand.

It's still a huge hill to climb, but the break has stopped Alinghi's momentum.

If you'd had a wishlist and thought we're 3-nil down, can we take a week off?

You'd say yes.

* Peter Lester is Yachting New Zealand's high-performance manager.


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