But when Dean Barker's boat so dramatically raised its skirt two Sundays ago, having being confronted by a startlingly improved Oracle Team USA performance, the contest was transformed. A yacht's hydraulics for a moment became as nationally significant as Richie McCaw's foot.
With every day that passed, elaborate discussions about how and where to stage the 2017 defence (see, for example, the shameful piece in this slot last week) began to look like a wild act of hubris. New Zealanders started breakfasting on their fingernails.
By Saturday morning, when Emirates Team New Zealand looked on the verge of a slow-motion low-wind victory, only to be beaten by time, the elastic in the national psyche was already fraying. Any lingering optimism was extinguished by Martin Tasker, and his very British soundtrack of defeatism.
Thousands of New Zealanders had been converted within a fortnight from indifference or antipathy to becoming physically ill with starboard entry anxiety. The wind was to blame, the tide was to blame. The rules, the officials. Get Steven Joyce to stay on land. Get Grant Dalton back on the water. Any moment it seemed Wayne Barnes might be spotted in the referees' boat, scheming with Suzie the Waitress.
Somehow we had offended the gods. It was a bit like Tantalus, the original tantalised wretch who pissed off the heavens so profoundly he was condemned to eternal starvation in Hades. When Tantalus reached to the bountiful fruit tree above, the branches were blown out of reach by the wind. Every time he tried to scoop water from below, the tide receded. Probably it was an ebb tide. Go ask an oracle.
With national reserves of cool-headedness directed exclusively to Barker, the rest of us took leave of our senses. The prize for the most deranged hubristic tweet of the Cup went to Wellington mayoral candidate Karunanidhi Muthu. His advice: 'This #AmericasCup race and our wait is like tantric sex building up up up and up and hold it NZ, orgasm is just round there!'
Meanwhile an emotional Radio Sport host raged that the New Zealand media had become hyperbolic, hysterical, before adding, with a tragicomic lack of self-awareness, that we should remember what happened in Hitler's Germany.
So to the next stages of grief: bargaining - which in this case will take the form of a tricky conversation about future rules and design specs and how much state cash to stump up - and then depression. There will be a bit of that, but already the response seems much more level-headed than the reaction to the 2007 Rugby World Cup capitulation in Cardiff. We'll be okay. We're hardly unique in the world in getting histrionic about sport.
The last stage of grief is acceptance: that it was a phenomenal, extraordinary competition. That Team New Zealand did brilliant things. That New Zealand can swell with pride in having as its voice the dignified and gracious Dean Barker. That Fortune, in all its mischief, remains as essential a character in sport as money. That defeat is not really death. That it was a kind of privilege to witness across 20 days such extraordinary theatre, possibly the greatest comeback in sport.
After the dust and tears settle, it's hard to see how this can be seen as anything but a massive boon for competitive sailing and for the Cup. It's unthinkable that New Zealand won't have a go again. A nation of overnight experts in yacht racing can cheerfully retire our expertise for another four years. And this morning, for the first time in a fortnight, the news bulletins will give us New Zealand's weather forecast before California's.
