Editorial: Team NZ rising superbly to Cup challenge

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Opinion

The off-water antics of Oracle and Alinghi led to risky racing in fast cats but here's hoping Kiwis return Cup to NZ - and former glories

The first round of the 34th America's Cup challenge is over, with Team New Zealand earning all the plaudits. The racing did not, of course, tell us what will transpire when the time comes for Oracle to defend the Auld Mug on San Francisco Bay.

But it revealed enough to draw some reasonable conclusions from what has happened on and off the water.

Not the least of these is the superb job that Team NZ has done in coming up quickly with a 22m catamaran that seems, at the very least, assured of victory in the Louis Vuitton Cup challenger series.

The magnitude of that achievement should not be underestimated. Oracle's decision to ditch the traditional monohulls placed great pressure on Team NZ to design, build and sail an entirely different breed of boat. The racing so far has confirmed how successful it has been.

Its own satisfaction was underlined by the decision to skip the challenger semifinals and go directly to the final.

Any serious misgivings about the boat's performance would surely have persuaded the team to seek more time on the water, rather than taking it back to the shed for fine-tuning.

Even victory in the challenger final, starting on August 18, will still tell us only a limited amount about the prospects against Oracle. The American team has both a huge budget and the time to make up any advantage Team NZ has gained in speed on the water.

Unfortunately, the defender this time will not have to face a challenger whose performance has been honed by tight racing against an array of highly competitive rivals.

The presence of only three teams in the challenger series speaks volumes for the failure of Oracle's vision of an event that would meet the expectations of the Facebook generation, not the Flintstones generation.

Its chief executive, Sir Russell Coutts, talked about "the coolest and fastest boats in the world" providing a spectacle that would appeal, especially, to television audiences.

What we have got is a contest that involved a price tag of about $120 million to develop a competitive team, a sum that persuaded a dozen prospective entrants to walk away.

Equally, the event has failed to attract the attention of American television channels or, indeed, San Franciscans. The low-key impact on the city is similar to that in San Diego when the event was last held in the United States.

All this makes it understandable that Bruno Trouble, the man credited with creating the Louis Vuitton Cup, would express the wish that Team NZ bring the cup back to Auckland. No longer is this country seen as unable to provide a canvas grand enough for the event.

In some part, this reflects the way in which billionaires Larry Ellison, of Oracle, and Ernesto Bertarelli, of Alinghi, have brought the cup to its knees.

Endless courtroom sparring led only to a misguided venture into high-speed, high-risk catamarans.

The death of sailor Andrew Simpson, of Swedish team Artemis, provided the ultimate verdict on the unacceptability of the danger.

The path ahead lies with smaller boats and smaller budgets. This would attract more teams, more sponsors and greater public interest.

Team NZ is keen to pursue this, and Auckland could be guaranteed to bring back much of the old pizzazz. It is too early to be counting chickens. But so far, so good.