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Home / Sport / Sailing / America's Cup

Yachting: Dickson working the Oracle

By Julie Ash
23 Nov, 2006 09:10 AM5 mins to read

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Chris Dickson's team contains a strong New Zealand contingent. Picture / Martin Sykes

Chris Dickson's team contains a strong New Zealand contingent. Picture / Martin Sykes

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KEY POINTS:

A gun-metal grey Oracle boat is perched on a cradle where Team New Zealand's boats once sat.

The old Team New Zealand base - with its jet-black exterior and white walls, still bearing the marks from the good-luck messages pinned up during the 2000 and 2003 campaigns -
is home to Chris Dickson's BMW Oracle Racing for the next three months.

Team New Zealand are just a few metres down the road in the old One World base, and have been hard at work on the Hauraki Gulf for more than a month.

It's not the hive of activity it used to be, but syndicate row has been given a little lease of life.

Dickson's team arrived last weekend. Just 38 members are here but after Christmas that number will double with the arrival of another boat. Despite predictions it will be Oracle's new second boat, the syndicate is saying nothing.

The steely-eyed Dickson, competing in his fifth cup, isn't about to give away any secrets, no matter how insignificant they might seem.

He is looking particularly lean - partly because he's competing in the New Zealand match-racing championships and the weight restriction has led to a few gibes from the crew about the skipper, who does the least work, keeping his weight down.

It is hard to believe that it's 20 years since Dickson made his cup debut in Fremantle, as skipper of New Zealand's first challenge.

At the helm of the Plastic Fantastic, KZ7, he led the team all the way to the challenger series final, winning 37 out of 38 round-robin matches.

"One of the great things about getting older is you get to know more," Dickson says.

"The things that used to come naturally 20 years ago I find a little more difficult now and some of the things that I didn't have the depth to know about 20 years ago I am very comfortable with now. I am very comfortable knowing what is going on with the whole boat package now. Twenty years ago I wasn't.

"As you get older the concentration needed to drive these boats and the complexity has gone up and it is a far more international game."

For the past eight months Dickson, his wife and two young daughters have lived in an apartment in Valencia.

They own a scattering of farm blocks north of Auckland, but the globetrotting means Dickson's job as a "weekend farmer" has gone by the wayside, and the land has been leased out.

There is a strong Kiwi contingent in his team, and Dickson says he is happy to be able to bring them home. But he's aware that the clock is ticking. In just five months' time it will be game on.

Dickson says Oracle - two points behind leaders Team New Zealand in the challenger rankings - are comfortable with where they are at but know they have to keep improving.

"There are some very good teams there and they are all going to have new hardware next year."

Oracle's first new boat, USA87, was launched this year and Dickson says the design team didn't hold back.

"She is a match racer's dream. If you are in a bit of street fight with 87 she will come out on top in her fair share. She tacks very well, gybes well, accelerates very well, comes out of prestarts and is a great boat for short course match racing, which is what it is in Valencia."

Unlike Team New Zealand, who have already launched their second boat, Oracle's newest weapon is still a little way off.

Dickson says the syndicate's strategy was to benefit from racing in 2006 and not lock into their second boat until after racing was over for the year.

"That made a big dilemma for us because it made it really hard to push the design late and push the construction late but still get the sailing time that we need to get the boat up to speed."

As to who has got it right, Dickson says only time will tell.

"In the regattas this year, we won one, Team NZ won one and Alinghi won one. I think it is fair to say Alinghi are not as comfortable as they were.

"I think it is very fair to say that we have got a shot of winning next year. Team New Zealand are on top now, they have got a shot at winning - I don't think we were in a position to say that three or four years ago."

CHRIS DICKSON

Born: November 3, 1961 in Auckland.

America's Cup

2007: Skipper and chief executive of Oracle Racing.
2003: Skipper of Oracle, which advanced to the final of the Louis Vuitton (LV) Cup.
1995: Spearheaded his own campaign, Tag Heuer. A low-budget one-boat team, advanced to LV Cup semifinals.
1992: Head-hunted by the fledgling Nippon Challenge syndicate to establish, train and prepare a team for Japan's first attempt at the contest. They advanced all the way to the LV semifinals.
1986/87: America's Cup debut at age 24 in Fremantle as skipper of New Zealand's first challenge, KZ7.

Other sailing

2000: Olympic Games in Sydney in the tornado class, finishing fifth.
1980s: Through the mid-1980s and into the early 1990s Dickson dominated the match-racing circuit, winning world championships three times and more than 20 Grade One titles. He held the world No 1 match-race ranking for three years.

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