Team NZ buoyant despite big spenders

COWES - Team New Zealand syndicate head Tom Schnackenberg rejects the idea that big-spending challengers will bury New Zealand under a pile of money at the next America's Cup regatta.

Team NZ, who won the cup in San Diego in 1995 then defended it in 2000, have since lost the heart of their winning squad to three billionaire-headed overseas syndicates.

Among those snapped up were former skipper Russell Coutts and tactician Brad Butterworth, gone to the Swiss syndicate headed by pharmaceuticals billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli. Seattle telecommunications billionaire Craig McCaw and San Francisco computer billionaire Larry Ellison have also helped to strip Team NZ of some of their most experienced sailors.

"By hiring our people it seems as though it was an attack on us. It was like a double win, you strengthen your own syndicate and weaken the opposition all at once," Schnackenberg said at Cowes, where Team NZ are racing at the America's Cup Jubilee regatta.

"It does bother us a little, but sometimes more money just creates more money, or more confusion. As long as we have enough to do what we want to do, then we feel we have enough.

"Often when you have large budgets a bigger portion of them is misspent. The serious money that is used to win the event by these big higher-paying syndicates may not be that much more than we use.

"If a syndicate is just focused on us there's a chance they'll miss something, so no, I don't think they're trying to bury us under a pile of money, even if it seems so."

Financially, Team NZ have secured a little over 70 per cent of the money they need to cover the defence and run the event. A glance around the packed marina at Cowes, off southern England, inspires doubt as to how a New Zealand syndicate can hope to compete with overseas wealth.

Fighting off moneyed challengers with a weak New Zealand dollar and a flat economy would seem to be a task of heroic proportions. None of that bothered Schnackenberg, who said he was pleased with the progress his young team had made on and off the water.

"In terms of winning the event we don't feel overawed. We hear what other syndicates do after the event, maybe years later, and you think, 'Oh my God, what a silly thing to do.'

"They obviously had more money pushing than a real need to do something, so we're comfortable with the budget."

- NZPA

Feature: America's Cup