US challengers got what they deserved

By ANGUS PHILLIPS

So, another America's Cup without an American boat. It's the second straight time the US has failed to make it through to the match, and only the second America-free final in the 152-year history of the Cup.

What's gone wrong? You'll find the answer in a bride's trousseau: something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.

Something old is Dennis Conner, who at 60 is 15 years removed from his last competitive cup campaign. He brought back old pals Tom Whidden and Peter Isler, Jerry Kirby and Vince Brun, and some old ideas about an All-American team.

Stars & Stripes, said a fellow closely allied with the team, is still in the business of the America's Cup, but not in the business of winning it. Results bear it out: Everyone back home for Christmas, looking flush.

Something new is OneWorld, the first-time campaign from Seattle whose mission was to show that a cup winner could be clean and tidy and have fun. Nice idea, but not too effective in the shark tank of the America's Cup where rivals looked at smiley-face syndicate chief Craig McCaw as a defenceless minnow and shredded him.

OneWorld gets the something borrowed prize, too, for all those secrets borrowed from Team New Zealand, which is how they got in trouble in the first place.

Something blue is the look on the faces of the sailors on Oracle/BMW after two years of kowtowing to billionaire megalomaniac Larry Ellison, who lacked the courtesy to even show up for the Louis Vuitton Cup prizegiving after getting walloped in the finals by Alinghi. Skipper Chris Dickson and helmsman Peter Holmberg set the tone for this outfit: they were barely on speaking terms by the end.

These three flawed US entries spent $400 million and, in this countryman's opinion, got about what they deserved: second, third and fifth place in an event where there is no second. On to the next round, no regrets.

No one knows how the Alinghi-Team NZ matchup will shake out, which is a triumph for the Kiwis even before racing starts. Remember, Team NZ has spent about half what Alinghi did and less than 10 per cent of what all the challengers shelled out to take the prize away. Foreign challengers hired away the best Kiwi sailors and many talented designers, builders and analysts from the 2000 cup winner.

Still, the decimated Team NZ enters the best-of-nine match next week at even odds or better to successfully defend.

Many deserve credit, but at the top of the list I'd place the late Sir Peter Blake, who had the brains and chutzpah to break with cup tradition eight years ago when he ruled out multiple defence syndicates.

Some Kiwis howled at the notion of a single defence syndicate (past defenders allowed any yacht club in their nation to compete for the right to sail in the Cup).

Blake reasoned correctly that a nation the size of New Zealand couldn't afford multiple syndicates and would be better served by putting all its best apples into one pie. That, in a nutshell, is how Team NZ stays in front, and hats off to Blakey for sussing it out.

As for the defectors, Russell Coutts, Brad Butterworth and their Kiwi mates on Alinghi, the Herald's recent exhaustive analysis of their departure bears out what many of us reckoned all along: the breakup of the old Team NZ was over control and power, over who was going to call the shots. If money was an issue, it was a distant second.

After eight spectacularly successful years, it seems clear that Coutts and Butterworth felt ready to run their own show. When they couldn't work it out at Team NZ, they went elsewhere. What's complicated about that?

And who's going to win? Hmmmm. One way or another, the final score is going to be 5-1 or 5-0. If the hula is hot, Dean Barker and his mates will win, but might give up a race to the clever and talented Alinghi afterguard.

If the hula is cold and the boats are equal in speed, Alinghi mops up.

nzherald.co.nz/americascup

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