Jay Kuten backed Team USA all the way for its working-class win. PHOTO/FILE
I admit freely I was cheering for Oracle Team USA in the America's Cup final.
I am not sorry Emirates Team New Zealand lost. And it wasn't simply the pull of latent American sympathy breaking out. No. Losing the America's Cup is good for New Zealand and here is why.
My sympathies are generally are with the underdog. What, you say, Larry Ellison, Oracle's boss an underdog? With a net worth of US$44 billion ($52.9 billion)?
In 1995, before we came to New Zealand, I cheered when the arrogant Dennis Conner's yacht, Stars and Stripes, was defeated by Russell Coutts skippering NZL32, Black Magic. It seemed the epitome of deserved victories.
Not only was this the underdog taking on and defeating the big dog but, as we learned, in order to make the competition possible - with the cost of boats exceeding $100 million - New Zealand citizens had contributed by buying red wool socks to help defray that cost. That was a team supported by the people of the whole country. In the US, we barely paid attention to America's Cup races because they were mainly the sport of billionaires like Ted Turner.
How can you identify with a sport in which you can't even imagine yourself competing. Obviously, New Zealanders from that far off little country could. And that's great.
Doubt began to set in after we got here. We soon learned, in the successful 2000 defence of the cup skippered again by Russell Coutts, that the socks which we were encouraged to buy, were now made in China. The government - I mean taxpayers - was picking up the tab for the boat. Oh, well, still good for New Zealand, especially Auckland.
Then came 2003. Coutts wanted a bigger say in management with Sir Peter Blake gone. And better pay for himself. He was told by haughty management to shove off. The boat does the job anyway, they said. Along comes Ernesto Bertarelli of the Swiss challenger Alinghi with a blank cheque book for Russell Coutts and teammate Grant Butterworth. Now, 2003 was quite an unusual year, when the best rapper was white, the best golfer was black, the Germans didn't want to go to war and the Swiss won the America's Cup with no visible coastline of their own.
I'll skip over the death threats and threats to bar Coutts from the Royal New Zealand Yacht Club when Kiwis forgot to be good sports and failed to realise it was still New Zealanders winning the cup.
Fast forward to 2007 and Larry Ellison's first attempt at the auld mug. He needs a sponsoring yacht club and applies to the St Francis, the old and snooty club in San Francisco. Rejected, as his money's not old enough, Ellison makes contact with the other bay area club, The Golden Gate. It was started in 1940 as a weekend sailing club for working-class sailors. Golden Gate is near broke. It needs $450,000 to stay afloat. Ellison joins together with 100 of his sailing staff. The rest as they say is history, except for the details. Those devils are these. In 2013 oil-funded Emirates' Team New Zealand came within one nautical mile of recapturing the cup. It was ahead 8-1. With the momentum of its sails Oracle came from behind in one of the greatest winner-take-all races in history.
The helmsman was an Aussie lad, Jimmie Spithill, who used to work in a shipyard. Now he has a house in Herne Bay not far from New Zealand's losing skipper, Dean Barker. A great Kiwi sailor, Russell Coutts, the manager of Team USA is the winningest sailor in America's Cup history. And the auld mug rests for now in a workingman's weekend sailing club. What's not to cheer about?