KEY POINTS:
If there's a more impressive person in Kiwi sport than Grant Dalton at the moment, he or she must be hiding.
At the end of race five, with Team New Zealand's reputation for smart crew work hanging in tatters that roughly resembled their shredded spinnaker, the team's boss
refused to blame bad luck.
This is a man-management, psych thing. If a sportsperson or team recognises the existence of bad luck, it becomes part of the culture and becomes a prop they rely on.
Better by far to address it as a problem and solve it.
But it is also a reflection of Dalton's straight-up, tell-it-like-it-is, look-it-in-the-eye-and-then-fix-it style. By the end of the aftermath of a disastrous race five (lost by 19s to Alinghi after the New Zealanders had put themselves in an excellent position until their spinnaker exploded), Dalton had most of the media corps in Valencia convinced this wasn't an America's Cup-threatening moment.
No smoke and mirrors here. Just common sense and intellect.
All regattas, in fact all big sporting events, have a moment that can turn the event, said Dalton.
"What we have to do now is make sure this isn't the moment that turns this regatta for us."
And you don't do that by just calling it bad luck and cussing the gods of yachting.
There was indeed a large slice of bad luck in what happened. But it was entirely impressive watching Team NZ taking collective responsibility for it - not to hide the blame nor duck the issue but to address it.
That small hole that appeared in the spinnaker on the first downwind run fooled them, as it did not appear to be threatening at first.
"It was about the size of a 20c piece," said Dalton. "I don't think I have ever seen one there [in that part of a sail] before. We are disappointed, this was an important race and not one we should have lost - not through something we have practised thousands of times."
The watching Kiwi fans were shattered when Team New Zealand, ahead by some 60m after a fine start from Dean Barker and a solid first beat, blew their spinnaker early in the first downwind run.
Then dilemma after disaster; the old and new spinnakers tangled as the crew tried to raise a fresh one with the old kite flapping overhead like a giant, malevolent bird, holding them back. With one ripped, they had to cut the second spinnaker away - and then had to retrieve essential gear from the jettisoned sail in the water to put up a third one, bleeding essential time.
It was a catastrophe, especially as Team NZ had arm-wrestled the advantage from Alinghi on the first beat and were controlling the race before that hole in the spinnaker exploded into a split - allowing the Swiss past.
They battled manfully on the way home and a 180m lead down to 60m, cutting 7s off the Swiss advantage over the final two legs.
At the end, it was hard not to contemplate that, even at 3-2 down, the freak spinnaker accident might spell the crucial difference in the 32nd America's Cup.
"A lot of times, we just sail on if we get a hole," said Dalton. "It depends where it is on the sail but if you do a peel, you lose time. Alinghi would have come back at us even if we had done a successful peel."
So failing to deal with the hole in time and the schemozzle with the second spinnaker caused the problem. So how to deal with it?
"I am not sure I know what you do about it," said Dalton. "It was so unusual and you also don't want to overreact with these things. I don't need to say anything to these guys, they all know. It's got nothing to do with bad luck. It's part of a yacht race. You make your own luck."
Dalton also said there was a danger in trying to over-solve the problem and spending too much time, energy and focus on it.
"Sometimes it's just better to kick the cat and move on," he said. "If you do anything more than that, you can trip yourselves up."
The race certainly showed again that Team NZ lost little or nothing in comparison to Alinghi in boatspeed.
Barker's start was aggressive and successful and sent the big yachts among the spectator craft like stock cars and Dalton re-emphasised all the positives, including how well they sailed to cut some of Alinghi's large lead.
But only time will tell if Dalton has managed to manage his team so they don't feel like the America's Cup might have fallen through that hole the size of a 20c piece.
