John Roughan: It's our turn in the sun, but just who is watching?

The first newspaper I ever bought regularly was the monthly Sports Digest. It covered some obscure events in the world, leafed between the domestic staple diet of rugby, cricket and, in those days, athletics.

I read it all. The magazine took too much of a 10-year-old's pocket money to waste a page.

One subject that always carried a fascination was the America's Cup, I'm not sure why. The photograph was always of two lonely yachts, tall white sails in the grey haze of a North Atlantic sky. They seemed far out to sea and impossibly far away. Maybe that was the fascination.

That and the fact the contest was unlike any true sporting event. There seemed to be only ever two entries, the New York Yacht Club and some blazered British chaps, and the Americans always won.

That didn't matter in the slightest. There was still a natural order to the world in the early 1960s, part of which was that Americans were winners and British were splendid losers.

Who knew what would happen to the America's Cup if they broke a tradition of, by then, 110 years? They never did. America's winning streak ran for 132 years before another New World nation of winners, Australia, got into the game. Sure enough, the America's Cup has never been the same.

It has never returned to that grainy grey Atlantic atmosphere. Even when America immediately won it back from Australia it went not to New England but to Southern California.

It happens in bright colour now, on television with computer graphics, but it still depends on the old mystique. I've wondered at times this summer whether much of the world is aware that anything has changed.

Any casually interested person in London or New York, Turin or Tokyo, who tuned in for the first race day back in October would have seen only one race. Not by chance I suspect, the first featured race was Stars and Stripes against GBR Challenge.

Around the world, viewers would have seen the Americans beat the British again. Nothing's changed, they probably thought, that's the America's Cup. Splendid thing.

Each entrant in the Louis Vuitton challenge had its turn on television. Each time, I am sure, its sponsors did their utmost to promote the race by association with the America's Cup. It might have been confusing to the millions unaware of the challenge format, but no matter. They caught a glimpse of two yachts, tall sails, fine brands, an event rich and splendid, impossibly far away.

I wonder how many in the world are still watching today. In a sense it doesn't matter. This day is our business. This afternoon we discover whether national spirit (and a mysterious hull extension) can beat the big, wide, wealthy world that lured our boys away.

My heart wants the black boat to win a sporting contest. My head hopes the hula is totally unfair. The rules of the America's Cup give the defenders some definite advantages. That is probably the true story of those 132 years.

From a sporting point of view it seems unsatisfactory that spectators and rival syndicates are told almost nothing about a design breakthrough that must defy the laws of physics. I have heard a land-based technician for Alinghi talk about the fear he felt the first time he went below deck under sail. The graunching and groaning of the boat was deafening and he said you could see the hull flexing along its length.

Maybe NZL82 is more rigid than Alinghi whose rig, according to Peter Lester in the Herald's lift-out this week, is designed to twist to advantage. But it asks too much of us to believe a centre-fixed appendage can ride close enough to a racing hull to avoid drag yet never touch it.

Still, the peculiar appeal of the America's Cup is that it was never intended to be fair. As Dennis Connor says, "If all the boats were the same it wouldn't be the America's Cup, it would be just another boat race and nobody would care."

May the loyal boys win an unequal contest over the next five races. Then we could begin to ponder whether the next defence might be better based on a little less national fervour and much more international sponsorship.

National fervour might make up for limited finance, but it breeds a nasty insularity that does not endear us to anyone.

On Wednesday an immensely sad letter was published in the paper. The navigator of OneWorld Challenge, Kevin Hall, complained about a speech given by Peter Lester to young sailors at the International Sailing Federation (ISAF) World Team Racing Championship awards banquet last week.

Evidently Lester, a pleasant man to meet, compared the affluence and arrogance of the America's Cup challengers to the modesty and modest means of the New Zealanders, and went on about the promise that Russell Coutts and Brad Butterworth had made to remain loyal.

Hall wrote: "It took the sailors of 10 nations some time to reclaim the vibe stolen from them that evening. It may take me a lifetime to remember only the good things about having spent the past two years in New Zealand."

Frankly, if this is what the cup is doing to us, I don't want it. It is time, I think, to replace the local sponsors with big international brands that might not only give the defenders a decent war chest but would promote our matches as globally as the challengers' backers promote theirs.

We could then ditch Team New Zealand's monopoly of the defence and allow our abundance of top sailors to compete to defend the cup rather than sail for foreign challengers. We could have a well-watched defenders' series just as there used to be in the grand old contest.

But this is getting ahead of the play. First we have to pray the hula works.

nzherald.co.nz/americascup

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