Sailing: Team New Zealand 'honoured' by Laureus Team of the Year nomination

By Christopher Reive

NZ Herald·

15 Feb, 2018 05:04 AM3 mins to read

Team New Zealand are nominated for World Team of the Year at the Laureus Sports Awards. Photo / Getty Images.

After taking down Oracle Team USA 7-1 to claim the America's Cup last year, Team New Zealand have turned their attention to unfamiliar adversaries.

Team New Zealand have been nominated for the Laureus World Team of the Year award, alongside some heavyweights of the sporting world.

The New England Patriots (NFL), Golden State Warriors (NBA), Real Madrid (La Liga), the French Davis Cup team (tennis), and Mercedes-AMG (Formula 1) are the other nominees who the Kiwi sailing crew will be up against.

"It's fantastic for the team and fantastic for the sport to be recognised alongside teams like Real Madrid that are big international teams," Team New Zealand chief operating officer Kevin Shoebridge said of the nomination.

The awards night was set to be held in Monaco on February 27, with Shoebridge and skipper Glenn Ashby heading over to represent the team.

Team New Zealand are just the second New Zealand sports team to ever be nominated for the Team of the Year award.

The All Blacks have been nominated for the award five times since it was established in 2000, winning in 2016.

"We came from some pretty dark places early on in our campaign and to be able to come through, be the lone wolf of the whole America's Cup programme - keeping the America's Cup going forward was really a huge effort," Ashby said.

"I think to be able to put yachting on the world stage, with absolutely international successful teams is a real honour and to be able to represent our fellow teammates in that arena is something that I think Kevin and I are obviously very, very proud to be able to come over and do it."

The team's skipper noted their performance in the Louis Vuitton Cup as the momentum builder, and Shoebridge added the turning point of their campaign came before the battle for the America's Cup had even begun.

"I would say one of the memorable moments for me was the recovery the team made after the boat capsized in the race against the British team in the semifinals. That was pretty much the establishing court for the campaign for us.

"The campaign could very easily have been over but it wasn't. We had a 72 hour period to repair the boat and get it back on the race course, and from that point on for me felt like the momentum changed and we felt sort of almost unstoppable at that point. It was a bit of a turning point in the campaign, so that was a memorable moment for me."