By SIMON COLLINS
Team New Zealand boss Ross Blackman invoked the spirit of the late Sir Peter Blake yesterday to assert that New Zealand would still hold the America's Cup next week.
In an upbeat, often humorous speech before 450 of the country's leaders at a Knowledge Wave Trust forum in
Auckland, he ticked off Prime Minister Helen Clark for wearing green instead of black and quoted an Australian who told him that if winning looked too easy, people would not appreciate it.
More seriously, he said he felt "the luckiest man in New Zealand" because of the opportunity the cup contest gave him "to make a positive difference to the country".
Sir Peter Blake had once said: "If it's not really, really hard, why on earth would you bother?"
"The team is in amazingly good heart," Mr Blackman told delegates.
"We are a very, very tight bunch of friends who have been together for a long time.
"These days I seem to spend more time on the telephone reassuring the rest of the country while our team gets on very well just doing the job."
He said that when he, Sir Peter and Alan Sefton put Team New Zealand together in its present form in 1993, everyone had multiple tasks.
"We have always believed that the smallest team we can get away with is the most effective and certainly the happiest," he said.
Ernest Rutherford had once said: "We haven't got the money so we have to think." Team New Zealand had put that into practice by being open with all members of the team and encouraging each one to take personal responsibility.
"Peter was a master at delegating responsibilities and, more importantly ... Peter had the uncanny ability to empower the person he had just given the responsibility to," Mr Blackman said.
"He said, 'If you make a mistake, please let me be the first one to know about it and I'll help you fix it.'
"What happens is that people just perform way beyond their normal thought patterns, and probably way beyond what they believe are their natural levels, because they believed that Peter was there to pick them up if they did fall over. He'd pick them up. He didn't let them down.
"But there was one word of caution and that was that you shouldn't make the same mistake twice."
Mr Blackman said it cost $130 million over 10 years to bring the America's Cup to New Zealand in 1995, and perhaps $185 million, counting the cost of its defence in 2000.
The economic benefit had been between $2.6 billion and $2.7 billion, including the value of publicity from more than 1500 journalists in Auckland to cover the present defence.
"Even though we are three down at the moment ... I personally feel I'm the luckiest man in New Zealand."
Continuous coverage of today's America's Cup race will begin on nzherald.co.nz at 12.30pm.
nzherald.co.nz/americascup
Racing schedule and results
By SIMON COLLINS
Team New Zealand boss Ross Blackman invoked the spirit of the late Sir Peter Blake yesterday to assert that New Zealand would still hold the America's Cup next week.
In an upbeat, often humorous speech before 450 of the country's leaders at a Knowledge Wave Trust forum in
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