Gold Cup success boosts Team NZ hopes

By Suzanne McFadden

Russell Coutts gets to keep his day job - but not without a little niggling from his workers.

Coutts is still the world's best matchracing skipper on the globe, even if he isn't officially ranked No 1 anymore.

He proved it in Bermuda yesterday, cleaning up at the Gold Cup for a fifth time with his Team Magic crew.

But there was more reward for Team New Zealand than Coutts winning again. It came with Murray Jones, his America's Cup tactician, finishing runner-up in the 3-1 final.

It just keeps getting better for Team New Zealand's sailing platoon.

Three of their skippers reached the top 16 in Bermuda; Dean Barker eliminated by Coutts in the first round.

TNZ's key concern in defending the America's Cup in 2000 is a lack of racing time - the challenger will have had four month's racing on the Hauraki Gulf to New Zealand's nil when the Cup match comes around.

The defenders' plan of attack has been to send four TNZ crews out onto the world's harbours.

"We've achieved a goal that we set three years ago - that Team New Zealand would have two or three top-rated crews competing on the matchracing circuit," Coutts said yesterday.

"We've just got to keep progressing along with that plan in our winter next year."

A year ago, Coutts beat Barker in the final of the Steinlager-Line 7 grand prix on the Waitemata Harbour.

"And Bermuda was offshore, just a little more difficult," he said.

"The Captain [Jones] and his crew did a great job. It's just that we sailed our best today, which didn't make it easy for Murray and the boys."

Two of Jones' crewmen, Peter Evans and Matthew Mason, were in Coutts' team when he won his first world championship in Long Beach in 1992. The other Jones crew was experienced trimmer Grant Loretz.

But they showed little respect for the boss on the racecourse yesterday.

Team Magic - Coutts, Brad Butterworth, Simon Daubney and Warwick Fleury - won the opening two races in vintage style.

But Team Jones, the first unseeded crew ever to make the Gold Cup final, trapped Coutts outside the startboat when the gun fired for race three and sailed away with it.

Jones again got the better of the start in the next race, but Team Magic got a lift on the left-hand side and took the lead at the first cross.

"Murray made a real good call in that last race," Coutts said. "We had to pick a side and I thought we'd picked the wrong one. That's why you should listen to your tactician sometimes."

The Gold Cup was the end of the competitive year for Team New Zealand's yachtsmen. Black Boat testing fires up again in the first week of December and each sailor's presence is required out on the Hauraki Gulf.

Coutts, who collected a $US17,000 cheque for Team Magic, naturally called it a good year, even though he sailed only two events on the circuit.

Coming back for illness, Coutts won the world Swan championships, the Big Boat series in San Francisco and picked up silver at the Etchell worlds.

He is now taking a holiday in the Caribbean with his son, while Jones goes tramping in the Himalayas.