Yachting: Young guns may get their chance

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

Team New Zealand skipper Russell Coutts is considering handing over the wheel of Black Magic to rising star Dean Barker in this America's Cup.

And Coutts is also thinking about bringing other young sailors into the crew for at least one race during the rest of the regatta against the Italians.

It is not a sign of arrogance, or that Team New Zealand think Prada are easy-beats.

But it is the "team" psyche of the defenders, and the confidence that all 32 sailors could step on to the Cup boat tomorrow.

In the first two victories, Team New Zealand stuck with a tried and true crew, whose average age is 38.

The youngest guys - Craig Monk and Barry McKay - are 32; navigator Tom Schnackenberg is 54.

"In many ways, what I've done with this team is select some of the players that perhaps, just by nature of their age, wouldn't get another chance at it," Coutts said.

"So I'm giving them their final shot. It's a little bit of a reward to some of the crew."

Coutts would like to rotate the sailors over the next few days, but is not sure if it would be the best thing for the youngsters.

"In some ways bringing new crew on after we've won two races may subject them to extra pressure, so they might not want to sail," he said.

"If you rotate the crew and all of a sudden something goes wrong, they get blamed for it. There's that element to consider.

"But I could put two very even teams together from within Team New Zealand."

As skipper on the back-up boat, Barker would be an obvious choice to take over from Coutts one day.

He has been getting rave reviews for his performances against Coutts in Team New Zealand's in-house racing. So good, in fact, that back-up tactician Tom Dodson reckoned Barker was putting on a better show in the pre-starts than Prada skipper Francesco de Angelis has so far.

Coutts got his break into the America's Cup in 1992, when as B-boat skipper he was called in to helm NZL20 in the dying stages of the challenger final - against the Italians on Il Moro di Venezia.

The guy he replaced, under controversial circumstances, was Rod Davis - now sailing coach for Prada.

Coutts is unlikely to get kicked off the boat here. But he says that if he felt he was not performing well, he would step down. Thus far, he has been twisting Luna Rossa into knots in the pre-start dance.

"Ninety per cent of the crew could jump onto the helm in a prestart right now, and do a pretty reasonable job," Coutts said. "A couple of years ago it was 20 per cent.

"Bringing Dean on board is something I'm considering. He has been giving us a big push in the pre-start manoeuvring. We've certainly become stronger because of the work we've put in as a team."

Black Magic bowman Dean Phipps reiterated that there had been intense battles between the Team New Zealand crws.

"It got so tight in the pre-starts that before we put the A team onto NZL60, Dean was beating up on Russell," he said. "Then Russell got his 'A into G' and starting winning a few. It's a very strong aspect of our team."