International sailors may be needed for Team NZ challenge

By JULIE ASH

Team New Zealand will have to consider employing more international sailors if they intend to mount a challenge for the next America's Cup, says former cup skipper Ed Baird.

While Team New Zealand pride themselves on being a national team, Baird said it wouldn't hurt to look overseas if there was no one in New Zealand strong and experienced enough to fill the sailing positions.

"New Zealand has a huge amount of talent in all aspects of the sport of sailing. But that is not saying there are not other places," he said.

"The thing that all teams have to consider is getting the right mix of people to complement each other and the task as well."

In the current crew, only Frenchman Bertrand Pace and Australian Adam Beashel are non New Zealanders on the sailing team.

Alinghi, by contrast, had 15 different nationalities spread through the whole team.

Ralph Norris, chairman of the Team New Zealand Trust, said it was too early to say if a new-look Team New Zealand might have a more international flavour to its crew.

Despite being beaten 5-0 by Alinghi, Baird was impressed with the Team New Zealand crew. He said the current crew probably would have beaten losing 2000 cup match syndicate Prada as well.

"This Team New Zealand is as good as any America's Cup team that has ever been," he said.

"It is just that they were sailing against a team that was truly historic in their capabilities.

"I can't remember seeing a team sail as well as I have seen Alinghi sail in the cup.

"When you get in the situation where you are behind it is quite easy to take big risks and get frustrated and desperate but Team New Zealand never showed that.

"They just kept picking away knowing what their best option was and taking it."

*But while the Black Boat let the team down on several occasions, the match did show some weaknesses in the crew, particularly in the afterguard.

GBR Challenge general manager and former New Zealand cup sailor David Barnes said the New Zealand crew would obviously be a lot wiser next time around.

"The Team New Zealand crew weren't too bad. Obviously they weren't in the league of Alinghi, but Alinghi went to all four corners of the world to get the best sailors," Barnes said.

"Team New Zealand have a good base of people.

"The difficulty for them will be finding the money to fund a challenge, as it is going to be extremely expensive going to Europe."

The present nationality rules make it difficult for sailors to work for syndicates based in countries other than their own, but Alinghi are expected to rewrite the rules and allow sailors to move more freely.

"I think the nationality rule has really been pretty silly for the last few cups," said Baird.

"Getting around it is very simple but ... it leaves people open for petty arbitration problems.

"Rather than spending all that extra time and energy worrying about it, when people can get around it anyway, let's move on," Baird said.

Alinghi will reveal the protocol for the next cup defence today.

*CORRECTION: This statement was originally incorrectly attributed to Ed Baird

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