Barker waiting for the race of his life

By WARREN GAMBLE

Across the Team New Zealand boardroom table, Dean Barker seems surprisingly at ease for a man carrying the expectations of a nation.

He smiles, stretches his 1.92m frame and sips from a water bottle as he discusses the lead-in to the biggest race of his life.

It's a rare day off the water for the 29-year-old charged with holding on to the America's Cup for New Zealand. It follows an even rarer complete day off for the Team New Zealand crew in the countdown to next Saturday's first cup race.

In a sign of the closely knit spirit of the team, many still met for breakfast on their rest day, or played golf. It's one of Barker's non-yachting pastimes, although he says an already dodgy swing has suffered from lack of practice in the past two years.

Sunglasses invariably parked on top of his head, the pin-up sailor with the beautiful girlfriend and a fast car seems to fit an advertiser's image of a brash Aucklander.

He is easygoing, down to earth, and quietly confident. There is little outward sign of the pressure building to the first race against his old mentor, Russell Coutts.

Does he have any relationship with Coutts now?

"Not really, no.

"It's a shame because we had a good relationship last time, both on and off the water. It was great.

"We used to play golf. He used to like going out and always playing for money. It was just the sort of person he is. He's very competitive, but that's fine." (Coutts has a lower handicap and usually got richer at Barker's expense.)

Barker says that on the match-racing circuit last year he and Team New Zealand members would run into Coutts and Butterworth on and off the water.

"It was very friendly and we can always share a joke, but you can definitely see things have changed. We are, after all, competitors and they will be definitely out there to try to beat us 5-0."

The departures of Coutts, Butterworth and other key sailors were a "huge bombshell" and left Barker doubting there would be a New Zealand team at all, but he insists he does not resent anyone who has left.

"They have all made their decisions for whatever reasons, and that's fine.

"I think it would certainly be a great feeling to go out and win with this team, given what we have had to overcome during this campaign."

The deft handling of the Coutts question, the switch from past negatives to present positives, underlines Barker's rapid grasp of the leadership role thrust on him in May 2000.

In the past, family and friends say he could be overly harsh on himself when things went wrong; now they say he remains unruffled.

"The day Russell and Brad walked away from Team New Zealand, Dean grew 10 feet," says family friend Rod Slater.

Slater, now a yachting commentator, says that days after the departures Barker fulfilled a promise to present the prizes at the Murrays Bay Sailing Club where he first learned to sail.

"The last place he needed to be was there, but he didn't let it faze him and he did a great job."

Barker agrees he has become better at dealing with the frustrations which occur in such an unpredictable sport on and off the water. He doesn't shout much on board.

"The thing with these boats is you have got 16 people sailing together. To get that sort of dynamic working, you want everybody to be thinking the exact same thing, knowing what's going to be happening next."

Barker already had long friendships with several Team New Zealand sailors, including tactician Hamish Pepper, but the long training days for more than two years have forged bonds across the whole squad, despite the competition for the final 16.

Without mentioning the word "loyal", Barker says the support from across the country has been overwhelming, adding to the team's resolve. He says the words of New Zealand's cup pioneer Sir Michael Fay are often cited at the base: "It's not every day you have the ability to make a difference to your country."

"It's just like when you watch the All Blacks playing, you are desperate for them to win because they, I guess, hold all the values of what New Zealand is," says Barker. "We obviously model ourselves on what they do as well."

Closer to home Barker's father, businessman Ray Barker, who set up the Barkers men's clothing stores, and mother Billie have helped him through the campaign lows.

Barker says his partner, former New Zealand hockey star Mandy Smith, has also been a source of strength.

"She has been phenomenal. I think having a very good understanding of sport at the very top level, dealing with pressure and going out and performing, she definitely understands what I am having to deal with."

But Smith has not been turned into a yachting expert and does not have "the hardest stomach for venturing out on the sea".

"She struggles to make out the front from the back of the boat," laughs Barker.

"That's good though because at least she can't make too many comments about what I'm doing in the racing."

The billion-dollar question is can New Zealand keep the America's Cup?

"We have to believe we have got good boats," Barker says. "We have to. Well, I believe we have got a very strong sailing team but we haven't been tested yet so that's really what the cup is all about.

"The whole time we are just hoping we all get out there and have the ability to race an even boat."

Barker acknowledges that probably sounds strange, given the radical hull appendage, hula for short, which the black boat designers unveiled last month. Many think it gives Team New Zealand a speed edge over Alinghi.

"The big misconception is that people tend to believe that it's a silver bullet and it isn't. In certain conditions it will have its advantages and in certain conditions it will have its disadvantages and that's just the balance we have to try and find."

It's hard to know if he is shadowboxing, positioning Team New Zealand against the ropes, ready for the sucker punch.

Barker makes no bones about being the underdog: "No question that we are."

He says Alinghi are race ready, have been able to develop throughout a campaign which has highlighted their strengths and weaknesses, and have had the budget to do everything they want.

Team New Zealand have had to evaluate every decision closely against a budget set early in the campaign, but in some respects that has honed their thinking.

Barker says the racing between him and back-up skipper Bertrand Pace has been invaluable, but because the black boats are nearly identical it does not have the same benefits as racing a variety of competitors.

But on sailing ability Barker is confident he and the team measure up.

In the last cup defence Coutts acknowledged that Barker won about half their trial races.

"We were able to bounce ideas off each other," Barker says.

"I hope that he learned things from me as much as I learned from him in the end, otherwise our racing wouldn't have been good enough.

"I know a lot of people say it's sort of a teacher against the pupil, but I think it's developed a long way from there."

Now he just wants to put everything to the test.

"I don't think you will ever feel you are 100 per cent ready. But at some stage you have to go out and race. That date has always been there, and I just want to go out there now and see if what we have done is good enough."

nzherald.co.nz/americascup

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