Barry Soper: Will the biggest spenders win the race?

Photo/AP

COMMENT

The Prime Minister of the day Jim Bolger stood on the Parliamentary forecourt, crammed packed with flag waving excited Kiwis, and quietly confided how difficult it is to pull in such a crowd and lamented that it was pity it wasn't closer to the election the following year.

The city was chock-a-block as the heavily mustachioed Peter Blake, blond hair cascading to his shoulders, stood on the back of a ute, arms raised acknowledging the cheering crowds.

It seemed the whole country was celebrating Black Magic's 1995 five zip win over, four time America's Cup winner, bad boy Dennis Conner's Stars and Stripes.

We'd twice reached the finals of the challenger series but this was our moment.

Five years later in Auckland, Team New Zealand became the first team outside the United States to successfully defend the America's Cup.

Three years later though we were well beaten by the Swiss syndicate Alinghi.

We were back for the next two regattas, but we won't mention San Francisco.

But here we are again.

The Beehive will already be planning the ticker tape parade and this time it'll be closer to the election with Bill English praying the feel good factor will follow the voter into the ballot box.

Will our pride, for we all rightly felt with the Blake victory that we had a stake in it, feel the same?

The last regatta saw the kiwi team getting $36 million but this time around The Beehive wasn't prepared to put their hands in our pockets to the same extent, essentially because things were happening a world away in Bermuda.

Emirates Team New Zealand did have its hand out though and were initially given five million bucks, no strings attached, to tide the team over and keep it together after that regatta we'd prefer to forget.

And then last year they also got an unknown amount of money for research and development which is handed out as a Callaghan Innovation Growth Grant, available to organisations who spend a minimum of three hundred thousand a year on R and D.

It was that sort of spend that brought us the kiwi innovation of foils, turning the yachts into grand prix racers.

Ironically Oracle Team USA was also a recipient of the grant from the same fund in the lead up to this year's contest.

If only the recipe politics was that simple, although considerably more is spent trying to stay in power.