Sailing on the crest of a wave

By Warren Gamble

Five years after becoming only the second country to take the America's Cup out of America, Team New Zealand have sailed triumphantly into uncharted waters.

They have become the first successful non-American defenders since Queen Victoria presented the cup for a race around the Isle of Wight in 1851.

And they did it in style.

Black Magic's emphatic 5-0 victory over Italy's Prada means the Auld Mug remains a silver lining in the Land of the Long White Cloud.

The ornate wine ewer, bolted down in grand United States yachting clubs for all but nine of its 149 years, is now a millennium symbol for an island nation which relishes winning, and partying.

After a winter of sporting discontent the celebrations following the finishing gun brought back something to shout, sing, dance, chant and rave about.

Even those who have preached indifference or disdain could be indirectly infected, through boosted tourism, more harbourside night life or just the enriching mix of foreign challengers - excited Italians, green-haired Americans and hard-partying Spanish.

Amid the victory crush on the revitalised Auckland waterfront, Blake, Coutts and Butterworth replaced Lomu, Cullen and Cairns on the national pedestal.

Arguments will remain over rich-boys-toys elitism, media-hyped patriotism, and the sometimes slight spectacle of America's Cup racing, especially when one boat is superior.

But as champagne-soaked skipper Russell Coutts raised the trophy at the Viaduct Basin few could quibble: New Zealand took on and whipped the best yachting technology money could buy to retain the oldest sporting trophy.

Until 1995 the Cup had been the only prize New Zealand yachties had not got their hands on. The round-the world race, the Admiral's Cup, and Olympic gold medals had all come south.

But despite the upstart successes of New Zealand's first two America's Cup challenges in Fremantle in 1987 and San Diego in 1992, the Sir Michael Fay-led campaigns foundered in the Louis Vuitton Cup challenger final.

In 1987 the Chris Dickson skippered KZ7 "plastic fantastic" fibreglass boat were undone by American legend Dennis Conner's Stars and Stripes 4-1.

Conner went on to win the cup back from the Australians who had become the first country to wrest it from its New York Yacht Club cabinet in 1983.

In San Diego in 1992 New Zealand's little red boat again got to the challenger final, this time against the Italian Il Moro di Venezia skippered by another now-familiar rival, American Paul Cayard.

The Kiwis were up 4-1 before the Italians came back to triumph 5-3. Coutts replaced Rod Davis at the helm for the final two races in what so far are his only America's Cup final losses.

Seven months later Coutts was appointed skipper for the 1995 challenge under Peter Blake, the round-the-world yachtsman made campaign manager in 1992.

It has been a winning combination, steering through the fundraising demands, the hype and ultimately the opposition.

The pair got together the experts who designed, built and sailed the black boats.

The San Diego campaign introduced the innovations and advanced crew work Team New Zealand again pulled out of the bag in Auckland.

Using the second of their two black boats, NZL38, Coutts' team won every opening round race against its six rivals, including pre-regatta favourite OneAustralia.

Their only loss in the next three rounds came in the protest room. In round four the Australian challenge snapped in half and sank. They carried on in their old boat and nosed out Chris Dickson's unheralded Swiss-backed, New Zealand-crewed Tag Heuer campaign in the semifinals.

The New Zealanders, who switched to an even faster Black Magic 1, were so far ahead they did not even sail their last three races.

The transtasman final showdown was no contest although the Australians did take the only race off New Zealand in the entire regatta. The loss, without Blake as a trimmer in his superstition-loaded lucky red socks, cemented the footwear's public appeal.

Finally getting their hands on the Louis Vuitton Cup cut little ice with Blake: "It's nice, but it's not what we're here for."

That was to take the Cup from Conner, a sailing legend and a champion love-to-hate figure in New Zealand.

Conner's Stars and Stripes, skippered by Cayard, rose from the dead to win the defenders' series.

In the event the Cup finals turned into a procession as Conner's team could only watch a disappearing black stern.

In a summary of the Kiwi edge which still holds water, American team designer John Marshall called it: "A total package that works perfectly from the top of the mast to the bottom of the keel."

In a pre-run of yesterday when the black boat crossed the line for the fifth time, the crew's self-imposed no-high-fives-or-you-go-over-the-side rule broke, as did the champagne corks.

Coutts, already a world matchracing champion and Olympic gold medallist said: "This is as good as it gets." (Until now)

Asked about defending it he said: "There's one thing we will have to work on next time, that's if we can get enough of this group to stay together. We've got to maintain the sort of focus that we've had right through this campaign."

The team, and the focus has remained.

From a low-key build-up in an anonymous shed on the Viaduct Basin, the $50 million defence campaign began in earnest three years ago with the beginning of thousands of miles of testing on the Hauraki Gulf.

Off the water, the design team, headed by nuclear physicist Tom Schnackenberg and veteran Laurie Davidson, had begun work in 1996 and started building the Cup defenders in April last year.

The first, NZL57 was launched in September, and the second and ultimately winning boat, NZL60, a month later as the 11 challengers started their Hauraki Gulf showdown.

They were whittled down over four months to a scintillating Prada-America One final, edged 4-3 by the Italians who came back from 2-3 to oust Paul Cayard.

Meanwhile, the black boats were duelling with each other, their potential a mystery.

Just over a week before the final Sir Peter Blake broke ranks ever so slightly with the determined non predictions of the New Zealand camp.

"Hopefully," he said grinning, "it will be boring."

The expert wheeze before the finals began on February 20 was that it would be anything but, and certainly not 5-0. A number questioned the New Zealanders' lack of "real" match racing without a defenders' series.

But in the lighter conditions which supposedly favoured the Italians the action was, if not boring, then hardly a "blow torch to the Y-fronts" to borrow a PJ Montgomeryism.

The Italians barely got close enough to see any Kiwi laundry, let alone get fired up about it as Team New Zealand showed the same clean stern as in San Diego.

Off the water, keeping the silverware has paid immediate dividends.

The America's Cup-fuelled bars, which have turned the former rusting-shed wasteland of Princes Wharf into the city's new nightime mecca were seething.

Dwellers in the $250 million of new Viaduct apartments nearby went laughing to the nearest money machine.

And visitors to the $125 million cup village in what was until recently a dowdy, forgotten part of the city had the best free show in town as Team New Zealand put the antique wine jug to its proper use.

It brought to vivid life the supposed exchange between Queen Victoria and her boatswain at the end of the first cup race 149 years ago.

Asked who was winning, the boatswain replied: "America,"

"And, pray, who is second?"

"Ma'am, there is no second."