Defending champions New Zealand will go into today's semifinal of the Team Racing world championships in Auckland as though it was the final deciding race in the America's Cup.
The New Zealand team, world champions for the past four years, finished the gold fleet round-robins yesterday in fifth place, but willbe third seeds for the semifinals today, the last day of racing.
Their promotion came through a regatta rule that allows only one team from each country to compete in the semifinals.
So there was good news and bad for Great Britain and the United States, whose teams filled the top four places in the gold league.
