KEY POINTS:
The America's Cup has reached the stage where the "psych-ops" almost out-rate the sailing as a source of fascination for the many of us who have repeatedly stayed up into the small hours to watch Dean Barker try to bring the Cup home.
Barker and Grant Dalton are
proving they are just as good - if not better - than Ernesto Bertarelli and Brad Butterworth when it comes to off-water gamesmanship.
Dalton kicked off the game by letting drop that Emirates Team New Zealand might reintroduce tough nationality requirements, which would make it difficult for prospective challengers to stack their teams with rival Kiwis if the next Cup was hosted in Auckland.
The implied threat - made before the Valencia series even began - matters diddly squat unless Barker's team does manage to triumph over Butterworth's more experienced crew.
But that's not the point.
The Team NZ boss was clearly trying to put the wind up Bertarelli's Kiwis - the successful team he bought to front his America's Cup forays - by suggesting their days as sailing mercenaries were nearing the end.
Classic "psych-ops" missions are designed to reduce morale and combat efficiency within the enemy's ranks, and I'm picking that Bertarelli's response - that Team NZ has to first win the Cup before it talks about how it would screw the rules in its favour - did not really cut the mustard.
But there is another level to Dalton's gamesmanship - bolstering the confidence of his own team and creating a national groundswell in Team NZ's favour.
Butterworth and his sailing musketeers - Warwick Fleury, Dean Phipps, Simon Daubney and Murray Jones - have seen it all before.
These tight five were the mainstay of Russell Coutts' two America's Cup wins when they played as Team NZ, and were branded traitors when they jumped ship and wrested the America's Cup from this country under a Swiss banner.
But they would still have been cut to the quick by the sub-text to Dalton's comments - that they had basically betrayed their countrymen by continuing to front a rival nation's team and could expect no mercy if defeated.
The Team NZ protest over Alinghi's mainsail system is just more of the same. Twenty-one years ago, most New Zealanders would not even have heard about the America's Cup. The story of how New Zealand came to embrace the Cup as a symbol of our nationhood will fascinate historians for years to come.
The whole venture owes a lot to the foresight, ambition and spruiking abilities of Sir Michael Fay who persuaded the-then Government-owned Bank of New Zealand to sponsor the KZ7 challenge in Perth.
Fay pitched the foray as a nationalistic endeavour which would have a $1 billion payback for New Zealand and gained huge support from the-then Labour Government which allowed Mike Moore to act as America's Cup Minister.
The payback was a long time coming, but New Zealand's sailors have now repeatedly shown they are the best in the world.
This country's prestige has grown immensely by hosting two America's Cups in Auckland, and by its sailors dominating this year's challenger and defender teams in Valencia.
This is terrific exposure for our small nation. I'm not so sure that Dalton would win this country many favours if he did reintroduce tough nationality requirements as a future condition for taking part in the regatta.
The Cup's history is vexed. The winners have considerable ability to change the rules in their favour, as Bertarelli did this time round to stop Coutts competing for a rival syndicate after their own relationship busted.
But the Cup's history also indicates it is more truly a race between yacht clubs from different countries, not nations.
Limiting other nationalities from joining a particular country's teams might create an overwhelming advantage for a future Team NZ but it would also deprive a large number of New Zealanders of their livelihoods.
Not just as sailors but also designers, sail-makers, and so forth.
If Dalton is seized on this path and Team NZ does win, he must at least ensure that a defenders' series was run in Auckland. There has not been one since New Zealand won the America's Cup.
The argument then was that this country was too small to fund more than one potential defender.
But as the Emirates sponsorship shows, major offshore corporates are willing to get exposure by being attached to New Zealand America's Cup teams.
If Dalton wants to screw the scrum in New Zealand's favour he should let Russell Coutts et al organise their own sponsorship and race off against Barker for the right to defend the next Cup.
