Grant Dalton, CEO of Emirates Team New Zealand, looks on during the Team New Zealand America's Cup Welcome Home Parade in 2017. Photo / Getty
Grant Dalton, CEO of Emirates Team New Zealand, looks on during the Team New Zealand America's Cup Welcome Home Parade in 2017. Photo / Getty
There are three small stories, mini-dramas if you will, that perfectly illustrate the enigma of Grant Dalton.
The first is his decades-long feud with the doyen of sailing broadcasting, PJ Montgomery.
Few would argue with the fact that Montgomery's climactic commentaries took the sport out of yacht clubs and intothe lounge room. He was a boon for the sport. Dalton hated him.
"I never fell out with Dalton; our relationship breakdown all came from him," Montgomery would say. "He is very good at manipulating and intimidating."
The seeds for the epic fallout were sown after Dalton believed Montgomery gave arch-rival the late Sir Peter Blake information on his position as the two fought for stage honours coming into Auckland during the 1989-90 Whitbread race. Blake's Steinlager 2 pipped Dalton's Fisher & Paykel by six minutes.
Vintage Dalton at his most paranoid. He never forgave PJ.
Another vignette worth retelling is his pursuit of money. Dalton is good at getting it and has surrounded himself in the past with people who are very good at making it, like Sir Stephen Tindall, Gary Paykel, Swiss-Italian billionaire Matteo de Nora and former Papatoetoe boy and Emirates executive Gary Chapman.
Grant Dalton and Matteo de Nora during the 2013 America's Cup. Photo / ACEA / Photo Gilles Martin-Raget
Chapman met Dalton while on holiday in New Zealand several years ago and the two hit it off. Chapman managed to get Dalton a face-to-face with the sheikhs who controlled the purse-strings at Emirates.
"At one point he said to me: 'How many f***ing cups of coffee do I have to drink before we get this over the line?' I told him to drink as many as it takes," Chapman recalls.
There's vintage Dalton again: a little bit rude, extremely impatient, but with just enough chutzpah to get rich men to write big cheques.
The third story is the one he'd all love us to remember him by. Emirates Team New Zealand had lost the 2013 America's Cup match in the most extraordinary circumstances, leaving an 8-1 lead to founder on the San Francisco Bay as Oracle launched an unforgettable comeback to win 9-8.
Many believe to this day that decisions Dalton made were directly to blame for the loss. His popularity was at low ebb but he somehow blocked out the noise and regrouped, promoting the precociously talented Peter Burling to helmsman and riding on his catamaran's carbon-fibre foils to a comprehensive win in Bermuda.
There we go again; vintage Dalton, refusing to give up, leading by sheer force of will.
He's been on this earth for 62 years and over time none of his edges have been rounded off or smoothed. His vision remains firmly set to black and white. In his world there are winners and losers.
"I have strong ideals of right and wrong," he once told me. "I trust really slowly and I lose it instantly. A grudge is normally created by somebody trying to screw you and in the America's Cup, a lot of people are trying to screw you.
"My game is to outlast them, too. A lot of these people come and they go and you just outlast them… eventually they f*** themselves."
It's a story that should suit the boss of Team New Zealand's world view. It's pretty black and white. Either wrong has been done, or it hasn't.
After hiding in their bunker yesterday afternoon as unanswered questions rained down upon the organisation, the CEO has come out on the front foot this morning, vowing to "knock down" the allegations one by one.
Vintage Dalts.
The quotes in this story are taken from interviews conducted for a feature profile "Grant Dalton: For love, and money" that originally ran in Canvas Magazine in 2017.
