Editorial: Patriotism taken too far

The Team New Zealand sailors who defected to rival America's Cup syndicates must surely have reckoned on a backlash. They would have weighed up the risk of, at worst, pariah status against the financial reward from foreign teams eager to tap their expertise and knowledge of the Waitemata. None more so than Russell Coutts and Brad Butterworth, who, it was assumed, would be pivotal figures in New Zealand's 2003 defence.

Others who put their personal interests first were not so obviously out of the top drawer of the country's sailing elite, or could be more easily replaced. Thus, Coutts and Butterworth should have known that joining the Swiss Alinghi syndicate would make them the focus of popular distaste. Yet even when calculating extreme risks, they could hardly have envisaged letters threatening violence against the children of its sailors.

The threats represent patriotism carried to unconscionable lengths. Those who went to Alinghi could hardly have expected New Zealanders to respond unemotionally. Yet until last September they must have thought the consequences would be relatively mild. Whatever yachting's equivalent of Coventry, they had avoided it. That all changed with the BlackHeart campaign. Orchestrated properly, it could have been the vehicle for delivering huge hometown support for Team New Zealand. Instead, it has tended to foment resentment against the defectors.

It is hardly surprising that BlackHeart, while fairly moderate in terms of its members' backgrounds and inclination, now appears to have spawned a more radical group. The genie is out of the bottle. It is probably also instructive that some phrases in the letters to Alinghi's base resembled quotes from BlackHeart's email newsletters. That is unsurprising. Any group that dreams up deranged threats is unlikely to possess people with the lucidity and literacy to concoct their own poison pen letters.

Now, above all else, a sense of perspective is required. On the one hand Alinghi must not overreact. It is to be hoped there is no truth to rumours that if the syndicate wins the cup, helicopters will take the likes of Coutts and Butterworth directly from the boat to the airport, where they will depart immediately for Switzerland. That smacks of the start of self-imposed exile. Victory on such terms would be pyrrhic.

The pair were within their rights to sail for a foreign syndicate but must live with the fact that they were bound to be seen as unpatriotic. There is also no point in trying to play down patriotism's role in the America's Cup. The event's original Deed of Gift deemed it "perpetually a challenge cup for friendly competition between foreign countries". And it is the Swiss flag that flies over Alinghi's base.

Nor, however, should there be any doubt that patriotism has often been sidelined in the America's Cup. In the very first race, in 1851, an English pilot named Underwood was hired as part of the crew of America. His knowledge of local winds and tidal conditions around the Isle of Wight proved vital. Yet amid the jubilation, the Americans were also relieved. They had feared Underwood's patriotic inclination would prevent him from doing his best for them.

Doubtless, Underwood was not flavour of the month in England. Nor can the likes of Coutts and Butterworth - modern-day Underwoods - expect to escape censure, especially since the sport has now been widely embraced. But the response of patriotic New Zealanders must be measured and well-directed. Above all, it should recognise that a successful defence would make the defectors the most irrelevant of any irrelevancy.

nzherald.co.nz/americascup

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