An open letter to Dean

Dean Barker will move on from the heartbreaking America's Cup loss. PICTURE/FILE

Dear Dean. When we saw your face as you stood alone at the helm after losing that last race, we just wanted to hold you, to wipe away your tears, and say "Thanks, mate - you did your best. We can't ask any more of you than that."

Certainly others are standing off to the side sharpening their claws; the losing tears of a passionate man being too powerful an aphrodisiac for the weak to resist.

Teddy Roosevelt had you in mind more than 100 years ago when he wrote: "It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

Rudyard Kipling had to have been right there with you pounding a grinder or trimming the "code zero" on San Francisco Bay because he knew you as well. He said: "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too ..."

And this bit is about you too, Dean ... "If you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, and lose, and start again at your beginnings and never breathe a word about your loss ..."

And, finally, Dean ... "If you can fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds' worth of distance run, yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, and - which is more - you'll be a man, my son!"

That's you, Dean.

We need to thank your men. Your losing isn't the crushing blow for the rest of us as it was for you, even if it seemed so at the time.

We have lost before - at Gallipoli, Corinth and Crete - and history there doesn't remember us as a bunch of losers. No, far from it - we are remembered as brave, resourceful, clever and tough. A country to be reckoned with.

You see mate, long after you are at the helm of another boat, and the depression has lifted off the rest of us, the legacy of Emirates Team New Zealand will live on.

People will be making their way to New Zealand to get their boats or their high-tech gadgets made. The world knows that we do the best high-tech, the best quality, and the best winning packages.

They know that the Oracle USA boat was made in New Zealand just as Emirates Team New Zealand was. After all, Larry Ellison loved us so much he bought the company.