Forum Home
Press F1
Thread ID: 30750	2003-03-02 02:24:00	No more america's cup	Mike (15)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
124938	2003-03-02 02:24:00	well that's it - it's all over... :D Mike.	Mike (15)
124939	2003-03-02 03:38:00	Wonder if Team NZ will have big enough budget for the next America's Cup in Europe... This has been an interesting Cup - the boats breaking down, NZ'ers calling Coutts and Butterworth traitors, new designs on the NZL81/82 boats...etc I don't blame Coutts/Butterworth for going to another team, after all that is sports/business. If they had indeed stayed with TNZ, I feel the boats probably would have still broken down - because they weren't due to human error. We should feel proud that a New Zealander has sailed a (non-NZ) team to victory, shows how good Kiwi's are at sailing. An interesting point - why hadn't TNZ trained enough in all kinds of conditions? As you have seen - the weather here is unpredictable, some days it will be perfect conditions, some days not. This is important, since they said they hadn't pushed the boats as hard as they did in the races...Alinghi were good at using the cancelled race days, to go out and practice in those conditions. In '95 and '00, TNZ had relatively basic boat designs (as compared to the '03 boats), and those basic designs won the Cup. But, congratulations to both TNZ and Alinghi - TNZ for a superb performance, keeping their heads held high, through all those gear failure, etc, and to Alinghi, for giving us a good challenge. We will bring the Cup back to NZ one day, for sure. We are a great sailing nation, and just like all successful teams, we had our downs. It just unfortunately happened during the Cup defence campaign... caffy	caffy (2665)
124940	2003-03-02 03:45:00	can't just blame the boat. They got completely outsailed in race 2. Butterworth is the difference. Coutts is just the steerer and glory boy	wotz (335)
124941	2003-03-02 03:45:00	I wonder what their going to do with that sail driven submarine? :(	B.M. (505)
124942	2003-03-02 04:05:00	I feel so gutted that we did not even win one race. :-( It was always going to be tough for TNZ with the financial and experience advantages that veterans Coutts, Butterworth and co. had over Dean Barker and his team but it would have been nice to win at least one race. Poor Dean, I really feel for him, being the helmsman.	Susan B (19)
124943	2003-03-02 04:06:00	> An interesting point - why hadn't TNZ trained enough > in all kinds of conditions? As you have seen - the > weather here is unpredictable, some days it will be > perfect conditions, some days not. This is important, > since they said they hadn't pushed the boats as hard > as they did in the races...Alinghi were good at using > the cancelled race days, to go out and practice in > those conditions. Lack of money - TNZ didn't have spare gear - TNZ had two race ready masts, one on each boat. Alinghi had 4 - they could afford to damage their boat during practices, whereas TNZ couldn't. We lost due to lack of money, not because people left the team, not because our guys can't sail (boy-oh-boy can they sail!), and not because our boat fell apart at times (although this was partly a result of the lack of finance). I'm actually somewhat glad the cup's leaving - a lot of kiwis were getting quite obsessive about the cup: anyone who wasn't that interested wasn't loyal or was a traitor... we had kiwis turning on kiwis, and that's not good for the country... it shows how "loyal" we really were. It's a pity it'll cost us so much more to win it back, but maybe next time we'll really get behind the team and the campaign, we'll get some serious sponsors in to really finance the team so that we can really afford to win the cup back. They reckon that having the cup in NZ brought billions into the economy over 8 years - where were those billions when we needed to defend it? To have TNZ $40m short at the start of the campaign played a big part in it. Oh well, c'est la vie Mike.	Mike (15)
124944	2003-03-02 04:13:00	People seem to be blaming the boat . Don't forget that Alinghi had breakages, but luckily they were all during training days . I think the difference was defineately Butterworth . It was good while we had the cup, but NZ can win it again and I for one are very proud of what TeamNZ achieved	Baldy (26)
124945	2003-03-02 04:33:00	Does anyone remember when Irene van Dyk left her South African netball team, and came to New Zealand . The South African's were kicking up a big fuss about that, while us NZ'ers welcomed her . Thats saying that NZ'ers accept people ditching their home country team for another team . Totally contradicting what's happening now isn't it? I think, that to be successful again in the future, TNZ needs to look at a bigger budget . And yes, Butterworth was excellent in his role as tactician - with Coutts they make a lethal combination	caffy (2665)
124946	2003-03-02 07:27:00	I think NZ is one of the only countries that try to have yachting as a "national sport". All the other entrants are mainly richboys. It's millionaire/billionaire) racing. We just don't seem to have any willing rich people at the moment.	-=JM=- (16)
124947	2003-03-02 15:10:00	Gotta agree with ya Mike, about the finance side of things. I heard that the last cup brought in $650 million - the damned GST on that sort of expenditure would have equalled the budget we had for this defence, let alone the extra income tax the Govt earned from all that extra income - I think the Govt turned a bloody poor show not getting more behind the defence - and as well... the Yacht Squadron was good enough to call themselves team NEW ZEALAND after all - what a damned misnomer. Grr	Greg S (201)
1 2