KEY POINTS:
On Sunday afternoon, Don Cowie was draped in a chair at the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, completely buggered.
The 44-year-old had just won the New Zealand match-racing championships with Team New Zealand skipper Dean Barker, Terry Hutchinson, James Dagg and Jeremy Lomas.
"I was knackered," Cowie says. "One of my first match-racing regattas was in the MRXs [the yachts used in the championship] in 1990, the first year they went in the water. Dean was probably only about 16. I was feeling bloody old, I can tell you that."
The regatta had been a tough one. Not only did the crews have to deal with blustery winds, there was also the torrid current and formidable competition.
For many it would have been too much. But not Cowie, an Olympic silver medallist and veteran America's Cup campaigner. Cowie and giving in do not go hand in hand - otherwise his sailing career would have ended at the Milford Cruising Club 34 years ago.
Born in Palmerston North, Cowie shifted to Auckland when he was 10 when his father's plastics company relocated. His parents surprised the youngest of their three children with a P-class yacht one Christmas. "They put it in the living room," he recalls.
"But we had no idea how to sail. We lived in Castor Bay, so we pushed it down to the beach, pulled the sail up and they pushed me off and probably went back and started drinking.
"There was a couple of sticks in the bottom of the boat [the sail battens]. We didn't know what they were so we just left them there."
Cowie joined the Milford Cruising Club. Up the road at Murrays Bay were Chris Dickson, Russell Coutts and Hamish Wilcox. "I think it was quite good that I wasn't pressured to race when I was a kid. Occasionally I'd ask Dad if I could go to Murrays Bay but we didn't have a trailer so we had to put the P-class in the boot of the Holden and tie the mast on the roof .
"I didn't have a beach trolley or anything so I'd just drag it down the sand. I'd always come last. In fact one of the first races I did at Milford I didn't even get to the start line before everyone else had finished. I was so light and it was on the tide ... I didn't know how to ease the sail and had it pulled in everywhere I went.
"I went backwards with the tide. Finally everyone finished and I got to the startline and they were taking all the marks away."
The experience would have seen most kids pack it in. Not Cowie. On leaving school he started a plastic engineering cadetship at his father's company but his stint was short-lived: "It was too hard working for your father". So he started sail-making.
He teamed with John Moyes in the Flying Dutchman in 1981 but they failed to qualify for the Olympics.
The America's Cup kept Cowie busy in the late 1980s and it wasn't until 1992 that he made it to the Olympics in the Star class after teaming with Rod Davis, whom he'd met in the 1988 cup.
T HE pair won the silver medal behind Americans Mark Reynolds and Hal Haenel, who won the regatta with a race to spare. "I went to the Games thinking I'd be rapt if we finished in the top eight ... To stand on the podium and get a medal was very special."
Davis and Cowie finished fifth in Atlanta then changed to the Soling, where they placed fifth in Sydney.
Cowie managed the New Zealand team at the last Olympics but isn't sure about the current format.
"In Athens the Stars didn't race until the very end; the village was like a ghost town. There is nothing there for the big guys to sail other than the Finn or Star.
"The Star class has got so much depth but a lot of countries can't qualify and yet they'll have 40 Lasers there and the guys ranked 35th-40th can't even sail ... just so they can say we have got 40 nations in the Olympics. It is all very PC."
Cowie's cup career started in 1985 when he went to Fremantle as a sailmaker for Lidgard Sails. He sailed on KZ1 in 1988, on the "Red sled" NZL20 in 1992 and then joined Nippon Challenge as coach.
"Russell [Coutts] always had Warwick [Fleury] as his mainsheet trimmer, so I was always going to be a B-boat sailor."
In 2000 he coached Prada then returned to sailing as a trimmer for OneWorld.
"To me the Olympics has always been my ultimate dream and the America's Cup has been something that has been my living. In saying that, it is a bit different this time. As you get older you know you haven't won it and to be back with New Zealand is very special. It is a great team, it has a good feel about it."
When discussing the older statesmen at Team New Zealand, and his second place on that list behind Grant Dalton on the race boat, Cowie is quick to correct.
"Trae [Tony Rae] is older than me," he said with almost great excitement.
"Just ... But I'll take as much as I can get. It is not that physical for me but it is quite tiring on the old brain."
THE COWIE FILE
Born: Palmerston North, January 1962.
Status: Married to Jane. Two daughters, Sarah and Charlotte.
Position on boat: Trimmer.
America's Cup career:
2007: Emirates Team New Zealand.
2003: One World.
2000: Prada.
1995: Nippon Challenge.
1992: New Zealand Challenge.
1988: New Zealand Challenge.
Other:
2000: Olympics 5th Soling Class.
1996: Olympics 5th Star Class.
1992: Olympics Silver medal in Star Class with Rod Davis. It doesn't get any easier
