Yachting: Mamma mia Prada's back in force

The Italian team are here to work their Latin magic on the city, not to sell belts, reports SUZANNE McFADDEN.

You sense they are back again when you spy the gleaming Vespas that swerve deftly in and out of the stalled traffic along Auckland's Viaduct. The feel becomes stronger when you catch sight of lithe, muscled men in their stylish grey T-shirts running criss-cross through Victoria Park at dawn.

But you know they are here for sure when you see those green, white and red flags snapping in the spring breeze atop the Heritage Hotel on the old Farmers site in Hobson St, where they have taken over a large slice of the hotel, plus the ballroom. A check at the big silver shed at the dead end of Halsey St, where more flags are fluttering, and all becomes obvious. The Prada team are here, training for their America's Cup challenge in 2003 - and working their Italian magic on our Auckland summer.

Auckland's love affair with the Italian America's Cup syndicate seems hard to fathom. Why are they so welcomed here when only two summers ago they tried to steal sailing's ultimate prize from our own Team New Zealand?

Maybe we fell in love with Prada because they personified the first foreign cup campaign to come to Auckland. The charm of "Il Barone", skipper Francesco de Angelis, was endearing.

Then there were the Latin accents and the way the Prada fashion name oozed European chic over the city. Maybe we admired the way they handled their scooters. All up, we enjoyed them - we even let them share our victory parade. The men, women and children of Prada are uncertain why they attract this affection but they are certainly eager to enjoy it. There is a mutual flame burning here.

For some of their sailors, this is the fifth summer they have spent in Auckland. Their wives have given birth to their children here. They love eating our red meat - without the fear of contracting mad cow disease. They spend their days off surfing the wild west waves at Piha. Overall, they feel more at home in Auckland than at their Northern summer base of Punta Ala, on the Tuscany coast.

Alessandra Ghezzi, Prada's newly married press officer, who has spent the past four summers in New Zealand, says she cannot explain why the Prada team are so warmly embraced here.

"I think, for sure, New Zealanders are generally very friendly," she says. (All Italians in the Prada syndicate say "for sure" at least once in a conversation). "New Zealanders always talk to you when you go into a store and they ask how your day is going. No one does that in Italy. You think, 'Do they know me?"'

The Italians obviously reply politely, because the Prada families have earned discounts at many stores around the city.

But there are a few new faces in Prada this summer that shopkeepers will have to commit to memory. Syndicate head Patrizio Bertelli, the man behind the thriving Prada fashion empire, has flung open the team doors for his coming challenge. This year's Prada lineup includes Americans, Frenchmen, Australians, Englishmen and New Zealanders.

Of course, under the cup's strict nationality rules, they are all considered Italians and therefore given relevant Italian names. For example, New Zealand helmsman Gavin Brady is now known as "Gavino".

There is also a stream of new wives in the extended Prada famiglia. This year alone there have been seven weddings - two of them inter-Prada - and all greeted with Italian enthusiasm. For example, when Alessandra Ghezzi married American sailor Thomas ("Tommaso") Burnham in a little church in Punta Ala in August, the entire team, including Patrizio Bertelli, was there.

Burnham, who sailed for Young America in the last Louis Vuitton Cup challenger series in Auckland, went on to Italy with the Young America boats when Prada bought them. He was hired and fell in love with its energetic press officer.

"The face of the Prada team has changed so much - it's like everyone is growing up with the cup," Ghezzi says. A whole new Prada generation has been born since the last cup - at least six babies to crew and shore members and another due any week now.

Sitting in the lobby of the Heritage, a fleet of stylish three-wheeled baby buggies whizz by. And there's another thing going on here too - all of the new Prada babies are girls.

Susan Jordan, the wife of Prada sailor Hartwell Jordan, gave birth to their first daughter, Sullivan Grace, five weeks ago at National Women's.

"I chose to come here instead of going back to the United States because I had a really good doctor here and they don't have a midwife system in the States," Susan says. "If I'd stayed in Italy I could well have been on my own."

Italian Monica Romeo did not hesitate to leave her home, knowing her first child is due in January. Romeo and her sailor husband Piero cannot wait to have their "Kiwi baby", a daughter they will name Ludovica. "I am so excited that she will be a Kiwi baby. I feel very comfortable here."

The Romeos want to give their daughter a Maori middle name that has a relationship with the sea. Monica is enticed by the story of Pania, the maiden lured away by the sea people. What about Moana? She breaks into a fit of giggles. "In Italy, Moana was a famous porn star. I would be giving my daughter a career before she is even born."

New Zealand sailing wife Liz Davis smiles at the memory of bringing up America's Cup babies. Her three children with nine-time Cup veteran Rod Davis have grown into "Cup kids" - Hannah is now 14, Caroline, 12, and Grant, 10.

"I always reckon having a baby in the middle of the America's Cup is the best time," she says. "You have so much help from all the other mums. And as they grow up, it's a neat way for your kids to see and experience the rest of the world."

With Rod sailing for Prada this time, the Davis family are in a bizarre situation. Although they are back in Auckland after six months in Italy, they are unable to move back into their Remuera house because, under the cup's nationality rule, Davis' principal residence must be in Italy for two years before the regatta.

So the family is based in the Heritage's tower wing, and in the mornings Liz drives the children across the city to their schools.

When they were in Italy, the children studied by correspondence for two terms and spent a few weeks in Italian schools learning the language.

But Liz has some pangs of guilt about whether they have done the right thing for their kids. "I wonder if in 10 years I will look back and think I made a botch-up of our children's education," she says.

"But I think they are learning so much about the world. The kids miss home - they miss playing soccer because they haven't seen winter for a couple of years. But I ask them would they rather be cold and wet, or lying on a Mediterranean beach?"

The Italian education system is not as flexible as New Zealand's. They have no foreign correspondence programme and swapping schools is not encouraged, so many Prada wives have had to stay in Italy while their children go to school.

Only two Italian families with school-age children have made it to Auckland so far this spring. Prada skipper Francesco de Angelis is in Auckland on his own and is missing his wife and two young sons, who are in Milan, where the school year has only just begun. They will come to New Zealand for Christmas.

Sabrina Mancuso, who has two children under three and does not speak English, finds it too difficult to do the shopping on her own with little Sebastian and Susanna in tow. She has to wait until her husband, sailor Pietro d'Ali, has a day off.

Some Prada wives and partners have come here hoping to get jobs. LouAnne Calder (married to Prada sail designer Steve Calder) has left her job as a radiation therapist in Florida.

She has a New Zealand working permit but must wait for word on whether she can work in Auckland - in a field which is crying out for help. In the meantime, she helps out at her 8-year-old son Kai's school.

At 7.30 pm every day, the families come together at the Heritage where the ballroom has been transformed into the "Prada restaurant", catered for by their own chefs.

The team take three Italian chefs with them around the world to make sure they get those Mediterranean flavours just right. "Their job is a very tough one," says Alessandra Ghezzi. "They cook breakfast and dinner, and pack lunch boxes for the sailors every day. The hard part is getting the amounts right - sometimes there are 50 people at dinner, sometimes 100."

The dinner menu is always varied, but is typically Mediterranean, says Ghezzi: mountains of meat, fish, vegetables, pasta and fruit. The Italians cannot get enough of our local produce, especially red meat and kumara.

In some ways, the Heritage has become Prada's giant playground. Families are scattered around the two wings of the hotel and everyone has more or less the same room each time they come to Auckland. The children happily ride their scooters down the hallways, and at Halloween went trick or treating down the elegant corridors.

Prada have become part of the fabric of the Heritage, says the hotel's communications manager, Susan Gibson. "They enlighten and enrich the hotel - it wouldn't be summer without the team," she says.

Certainly the Heritage throws itself into its Italian phase with gusto. Some staff members are taking management-paid Italian language lessons and the hotel group is sponsoring the Italian film festival now running throughout the country.

Seeing Italian flags fluttering along the Auckland waterfront during the film festival made the Prada syndicate feel even more at home.

When they are asked what they miss about Italy, they all answer with the same alacrity: the weather.

Back in the resort town of Punta Ala, every day is sunny and the waters are clear and warm. Children have three months off school over summer, and the families "hang out" at the beach while the husbands and fathers go sailing. Fortunately, the people of Prada had access to the patch of beach in front of the Punta Ala Yacht Club, otherwise they would have to pay $NZ100 a day for a square of sand and an umbrella on the main beach.

"Punta Ala is beautiful but it is so far from anything. In Auckland, we are close to the sea but still close to the city life," says Alessandra Ghezzi.

Here, the Prada sailors head off to the west coast beaches to surf and swim but they admit they miss the ski season - some of them have not seen a winter in five years.

At Syndicate Row in the America's Cup village, Prada take their three boats out on the Gulf whenever the winds and the seas let them. Already there are people knocking at their base door, mostly Italians on holiday or locals wanting to know if they can buy Prada's signature grey team shirts.

Usually such inquiries are doomed. Prada do not market their sailing-wear - Patrizio Bertelli has come back to Auckland to win a boat race, not to sell belts.

Prada may well have some competition in the attention stakes this time round. Another Italian syndicate - Mascalzone Latino (translation: Latin Rascal) - has already registered and leased space for its own restaurant and gym in the swanky new Chancery buildings.

Then there is the Swiss Alinghi syndicate, which has spared no expense with its monstrous base next to Team New Zealand, nicknamed the Dream Box.

But it will not be easy to extricate Prada from Kiwi hearts.

In the words of the Italian proverb: "Nessun amore è come il primo" - there is no love like the firstlove.