New Zealand Probably Needs a Miracle
Even the wind is going against the home team in the America’s Cup, threatening to blow the oldest trophy in international sports back to Europe for the first time in 152 years.
Two-time defending champion Team New Zealand made the wrong decision at the start of the race Tuesday and watched Alinghi of Switzerland immediately gain from a wind shift and sail off to a 3-0 lead in the best-of-nine series.
With every race, New Zealand-born skipper Russell Coutts and his Kiwi-dominated crew aboard the 80-foot Alinghi prove they’re among the best in America’s Cup history.
And with every defeat, this country of 3.8-million people slips deeper into shock.
New Zealanders watched their black boat practically fall apart in the opener, then drop out. In Race 2, skipper Dean Barker lost the lead to Coutts, his former mentor, in the final several hundred yards.
Then came the Race 3 mistake, and the headline in Wednesday’s New Zealand Herald blared: “Three-nil -- what can we do?”
Race 4 is scheduled for Thursday (this afternoon PST), but predicted strong winds could blow it out.
In the two races they’ve finished, the Kiwis have lost by seven and 23 seconds -- close margins after sailing for 18.5 nautical miles. But they need a miracle against Coutts and his all-star crew.
Coutts, 40, has never lost a race in the America’s Cup match, running his record to 12 straight wins over three regattas and for two countries. Now the Kiwis have to beat their former skipper five times in six races.
“I don’t think it’s as bad as what people think,” Barker, 29, said. “Sure we’re in a very, very tough position now; 3-0 down is not a nice place to be. But we certainly haven’t given up. We don’t feel like we’re sailing that badly. We’ve made two mistakes and it’s two mistakes too many that’s cost us.”
Alinghi has gotten everything right. Its weather team -- led by a Kiwi -- radioed the crew seven minutes before Tuesday’s start and said the wind would shift to the right side of the course. One minute later, the crew tossed the radios overboard in a watertight container, to be fetched by a chase boat, because communication with outside sources is prohibited inside of five minutes to go.
Alinghi’s brain trust heeded the call. Barker, meanwhile, admitted there was “confusion” aboard NZL-82, and the Kiwis picked the left side.
The two boats appear to be evenly matched, despite all the hype about Team New Zealand’s radical hull appendage, or “hula.” The Kiwis are simply being outsmarted by Coutts and tactician Brad Butterworth.
“I think Russell’s dominance of the sport is becoming more and more clear every day,” said Josh Belsky of Hood River, Ore., one of two Americans on Alinghi’s crew.
Coutts and Butterworth -- longtime golfing buddies as well as sailing partners -- left Team New Zealand in a dispute over how the syndicate would be run after it successfully defended the America’s Cup in 2000. They took with them top sail trimmers Simon Daubney and Warwick Fleury, bowman Dean Phipps and Murray Jones, an expert at picking wind shifts.
“I think they’re the best sailors in the world,” said 37-year-old Ernesto Bertarelli, the Swiss biotech billionaire who spent millions on Kiwi talent in his attempt to bring the America’s Cup to his landlocked country. “It’s obviously huge. These guys are very good.”
In 1851, the yacht America won what was then called the 100 Guinea Cup by beating a fleet of British schooners around the Isle of Wight. The trophy hasn’t been in European hands since.
Bertarelli, the navigator on the 16-man crew, sees firsthand what a good investment he made.
“Russell is a very smart man. He knows that if he didn’t have his crew, he wouldn’t be where he is,” Bertarelli said. “I think what you see on the water is a system at work. It’s not only one man. Obviously when it comes to the deciding moment, he’s a genius. He just has that extra bit that makes him different from the others and allows him to win.”
Coutts shrugged when asked about his America’s Cup winning streak.
“Brad and Warwick and Simon and Dean Phipps have actually had one more win than me in a row,” he said.
Coutts led Team New Zealand’s five-race rout of Dennis Conner off San Diego in 1995. After staking Team New Zealand to a 4-0 lead in 2000 against Italy’s Prada Challenge, Coutts handed the wheel to Barker and watched from a chase boat as the understudy delivered the clinching win.
With Coutts, “It’s just a sixth sense and an instinctual style of sailing that he has that is infectious to everybody else,” Belsky said.
Belsky gives Butterworth equal credit for Alinghi’s success.
“Russell really, really, 100%, trusts Brad to be his eyes and ears of everything that’s happening around, so he can concentrate on steering the boat and making it go fast,” Belsky said.
*
America’s Cup
ALINGHI OF SWITZERLAND
vs. TEAM NEW ZEALAND
(Alinghi leads best-of-nine series, 3-0)
*--* ALINGHI
*--*
Sail No.’s/Boat Name: SUI-64 and SUI-75
Skipper/Helmsman: Russell Coutts
Team size: 95
Hull color: Anthracite grey and red
Estimated budget: U.S. $55 million
*--* NEW ZEALAND
*--*
Sail No.’s/Boat Name: NZL-81 and NZL-82
Skipper/Helmsman: Dean Barker
Team size: 94
Hull color: Black
Estimated budget: U.S. $40 million
* Schedule: (U.S. dates, 4:15 p.m. PST) Race 4: Today; Race 5, Friday; Race 6, Saturday*; Race 7, Monday*; Race 8, Feb. 26*; Race 9, Feb. 28*
* TV: ESPN2