Dialogue: Man of the year, if we remember

There is something irresistible about selecting a man or woman of the year.

It is not so much the urge to award another accolade to someone who probably has plenty. It is more for the sake of the year, to mark it in some way before it expires.

It may be the first draft of history but we should try to get it right.

This year the Herald has invited readers to chose the man and woman of 2000. So far the votes are going overwhelmingly to Rob Waddell, Lucy Lawless and Merepeka Raukawa-Tait.

Waddell is the model New Zealand sportsman - modest, strong, quietly and utterly dominant in what he chooses to do. His solo row to gold at Sydney was a blessed relief after a barren week at the Olympics.

But is it the best thing that happened to us this year?

The two women are drawing votes for speaking out against child abuse. But oddly the man who did most to bring that brutality to public attention, Children's Commissioner Roger McClay, does not feature.

Tell me. In 10 years time what do you suppose you will remember most about the year 2000? The hand-wringing, if not much else, on child abuse? A Government that kept promises? A gold medal at Sydney? The America's Cup in Auckland?

No contest, right? Long after the year's crime and politics have faded in the public mind, when Waddell is a name in a library of Olympic moments, we will remember the carnival of the Cup.

Our man of the year has to be Russell Coutts.

Tell me again. In 10 years which will seem more important: that Coutts steered the black boat, or that he shortly thereafter jumped overboard to sail against us next time?

It may depend on our fortunes next time, and whether we have grown accustomed to producing more of the world's top sailors than we can possibly finance for the America's Cup.

Coutts gave us everything we asked. Last Christmas, as I recall, few things in the life of the country seemed quite so immediately important as keeping the America's Cup. No defender outside the United States had done that before.

Somehow the winning of the cup would not be complete without a successful defence. Right from the moment of triumph at San Diego we knew we needed to do it again. We had to win it at home.

The "family" of sponsors quickly re-signed a reluctant Sir Peter Blake and it must have cost them a fortune. Russell Coutts and Brad Butterworth probably wanted a similar deal to organise the next defence.

But the base has been built on the Auckland waterfront at considerable public expense; the mould of a successful campaign has been set. The family obviously didn't think they needed to pay Blake rates next time.

Coutts and Butterworth went around the world looking for a big-brand sponsor with deeper pockets. When they couldn't find one, they decided to seek their fortune as sailors.

Can you really blame them? On the boat they were the best in the world. Off the boat, they were not Sir Peter Blake. Sailing is their profession. They gave us their best, they owed us nothing more.

They would like to come back and beat the national flag-carrier next time. That happens in professional sport, as in any business.

New Zealanders work for Qantas and Fosters. New Zealanders coach or play rugby for British nations and do their utmost to beat the All Blacks. A team of former All Blacks tore into the current crop in the name of Japan a few weeks ago.

There were New Zealand sailors on most of the yachts vying to wrest the America's Cup from New Zealand last summer, and we didn't damn them for treachery.

Somehow, in our loss of Coutts and Butterworth, we managed to forget that they never were going to be driving our boat next time.

They were going to be ashore, trying to charm corporate sponsors and finesse any public problem. On the evidence of their parting press conferences, they might not have been very good at it.

But among the brilliant things they did for us on the water was to give us a new hope. When Russell Coutts handed the helm to Dean Barker for the hour of glory, we didn't know how important it might turn out to be, though perhaps Coutts did.

There is an allegory here of the national predicament. This is a pleasant, quiet place where people live well. To keep it that way, we will need to produce world-class performers and get used to the fact that they will often outgrow New Zealand as we like it.

In time we might forget the rather clumsy way that Coutts and Butterworth abandoned ship, having urged the rest of the crew to stay on board. They were doing their job.

We will look back on the first months of 2000 with memories mainly of the crowds at the waterfront, the armada heading out each day to the Gulf, the brilliance of the man at the helm of the black boat as he pounced on Prada in the first leg of the first race and never relaxed his grip.

This time last year, had we known we would keep the cup but lose the helmsman when it was all over, we would have been mightily relieved. We would would probably have made him man of the year.

There is still a week to do it.

Send your nominations to:

Your Vote

NZ Herald Editorial

PO Box 3290, Auckland

Fax: 373-6421

E-mail: yourvote@nzherald.co.nz

We will update the nominations and voting over the next month.