NZ pedals its way to brink of America’s Cup glory
Print Edition
EMIRATES Team New Zealand was to take to Bermuda’s Great Sound today (China time) with a mission, to finally wipe out the hurt inflicted on the sports-mad country by Oracle Team USA in the America’s Cup.
But while leading 6-1 in the first-to-seven final should make victory a near certainty, the Kiwis are not complacent.
“We are not taking anything for granted,” New Zealand helmsman Peter Burling said on Sunday after coolly steering his space-age 15-meter catamaran to yet another win over the team’s nemesis, Oracle Team USA’s skipper Jimmy Spithill.
It was Spithill and the team bankrolled by Oracle founder Larry Ellison who in 2013 turned an 1-8 deficit against New Zealand into a 9-8 victory and a successful defense of the oldest trophy in international sport.
Burling, who at only 26 could also unseat Spithill as the youngest ever person to helm a winning America’s Cup team, has exuded a disarming calm.
He won Olympic gold in Rio last year in the 49er skiff class with fellow crew member Blair Tuke and has brought a youthful confidence to New Zealand’s campaign to regain the “Auld Mug”, which was first won by the schooner “America” in 1851.
If New Zealand triumphs, many will put it down to the revolutionary “cycling” system developed to power the hydraulics needed to control the catamaran’s foils, which lift it out of the water, and the vast “wing” sail which drives it along.
Its “cyclors”, including an Olympic cycling medalist, have kept their heads down throughout the contest, pedalling furiously to provide enough oil in the system to allow the boat to perform almost balletic pirouette maneuvers on the water.
But while the America’s Cup is as much a design as a sailing race, with millions of dollars invested in the boats, psychological games are also crucial.
Spithill has more expertise in match racing, the sailing equivalent of a boxing contest, and the benefit of nearly two decades of America’s Cup experience.
Even after losing two races on Sunday, Spithill was not in any mood to give up, conceding that the US crew had been outsailed by Burling and his five Kiwi teammates, but vowing to come out fighting again today and take one race at a time.
None of this seems to have rattled Burling, despite a capsize in a semifinal race which nearly ended the Kiwi dream.
If he can show the same composure again, the man who has become the face of the New Zealand team could win himself a place in yachting history.
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