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And then there were two |
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By Steve Dickinson
Thursday January 13, 2000
Brad Butterworth of Team New Zealand summed up the thoughts
of all New Zealanders on the question of which challenger they
would prefer to face in the Cup competition. "The slowest one,"
of course.
I've been saying since day one, months ago, 'Cayard is the man'.
He'll be the one trying to give team New Zealand a bloody nose.
The man is a brawler. With his casual off handed manner and
Marx Brothers moustache he lulls you into a false sense of security.
You can't help but like the guy. He is not as verbally aggressive
as Evil Dennis, or as up himself like half the other skippers.
He's polite and will basically talk to anyone who wants to listen.
There's no skulduggery, no underhanded tricks...but don't be
fooled. This guys knows what it takes to win and he knows what
its like to lose.
Cayard and his team have been here for as long as the boat shed
was built, even before, when Auckland Harbour was still being
dredged. While the hosts were still deciding where to put the
hot-dog stands, Paul Cayard was here. He has sailed something
like 400 days on Auckland's harbour - even before team New Zealand's
boat touched the water. He went out and bought the NIWA weather
system, a buoy in the Auckland Harbour that indicates the weather
patterns. He purchased it from the New Zealand government (which
seems a bit odd, you think that the New Zealand government would
want New Zealand to win?) not because he needed it, he just
didn't want any one else to have the advantage. You get the
picture.
The Rest of the Pack
Dennis Conner pushed a late run, more by good luck than good
management. He had a fast boat ideal for heavy conditions and
the Auckland Haruaki Gulf has been serving up just what he needs
to make himself look good.
There was talk that AmericaOne would not even race Dennis in
Cayard's final race before the finals, but they did and the
result is a surprising one: Dennis had snuck in and won. Although
the boat became horribly slow in the lighter conditions at the
end of the race (it got down to 7 knots and she looked a little
piggish in the gybes) they had done enough to win.
Tomorrow (Friday January 14, 2000) Dennis will fight for a life
and it seems as if Prada and Stars and Stripes will go into
a desperate draw to see who punches it out with Cayard for the
right to take on Team New Zealand. The clever money has got
to be on Prada, but Dennis is a dealer and may come up with
the goods if this wind keeps up.
Yesterday's racing was in many ways a turning point, with the
race between AmericaOne and Prada. The wind was seen as a big
factor but an even bigger factor was the swell, which was pushing
in over a meter. After that day's racing the French crew renamed
their boat the Submarine because of how much water it had taken
on board! Under the overcast Auckland skies the boats pounded
through the swells and there was constant talk of breakage.
Even on the way out Luna Rossa had to be given time to replace
a mainsail as a series of broken battens had ripped it to shreds.
Paul Cayard's team battled hard on the first circuit of the
course, before pulling away from Asura for a comfortable win.
The loss for Gilmour's Asura, coupled with the win by Luna Rossa
eliminated the Nippon Challenge from the Louis Vuitton Cup.
Prada, the next day, went on to beat Le D�fi in a very close
race. The Italians couldn't pull away from the French despite
the heavy conditions. The French boat was flying downwind and
on the final run they gained an overlap before dropping back
just before the finish. Stars & Stripes also won a must-win
match against America True to keep its hopes alive for the Finals.
Team Dennis Conner was one point behind Prada, and while the
Italians had just one match left, Stars & Stripes still had
two left to sail. Beating Cayard today put them right in the
shotgun seat for the golden goal shoot-out with Prada, if all
goes well the following day.
Cayard's victory over Prada was the first that really seemed
to be in the hand of the umpires on the water. As the two yachts
powered on the last run to the finish, an extraordinary showdown
emerged as the two yachts charged down the run. They were virtually
locked together with protest flags flying constantly and the
two crews eyeball to eyeball and yelling at each other "proper
course, proper course". The umpires answered back with green
flag after green flag, directing no penalty for either team.
Cayard, the brawler, had seen the umpires' guards drop. He pushed
his attack and eventually got the penalty. It was now a full-on
nautical punch up. The Italians responded with a few left jabs
of their own, gybing to port right across the bow of
the starboard-tack AmericaOne.
Neck and neck with the boats only centimeters apart, and gybing
back and forth, AmericaOne's spinnaker touched the backstay
of Prada, thus resulting in another penalty for Cayard and crew.
From that point on it was a drag race to the finish. Prada gave
its best shot but at the end of the day it was Cayard's victory.
Cayard had beaten the Italians not just through pace, but also
threw cunning and brawling tactics. The Italians were gutted.
Torben Grael, the team's tactician, said: "It was a day with
very different emotions. We had a start that was not very good,
but after that we did a fantastic race to come back. I was very
proud of that and proud of the crew. But to see the results
of all that taken out of our control and end up in the hands
of the umpires...it is sad to finish that way."
In reply, John Stanley, the match umpire, explained the umpires'
roles: "We only umpire the race as we see the race, and we make
our decisions based on what we see in front of us. Often we're
not really sure which boats we are looking at, we're just looking
at two boats and we make our decisions. Where the boats go is
clearly the role of the skippers and the tacticians. It's not
for us to control their destiny at all."
Paul Cayard said of the day's race: "A good race by Prada. They're
tough; they showed a lot of fortitude there to come back. I
think John and I know we made some mistakes to allow that to
happen. It was just an awesome race. It reminds me of 1992 a
little bit. We had a couple of those kinds of races with Team
New Zealand and it was just a good toe-to-toe battle. So that's
good, that's what we're here for, and hopefully there will be
more of that in the finals."
After that huge race against Prada, and in very hard conditions,
it was rumored that AmericaOne, because it didn't need to, would
not actually race Stars and Stripes. Cayard refused to comment
for a while, then late in the night the calls were made and
Stars and Stripes would go head to head with AmerciaOne. The
outcome, we now know, was a win for Stars and Stripes. Psychologically,
I guess, you would have to say it is an advantage. Cayard obviously
wanted to win, but AmericaOne constantly gives the impression
that they are sailing within themselves. The decision to race
was good for the sport, good for television, good for the sportsmanship
that the America's Cup has so often lacked and good for Cayard
and his team.
What about the Kiwis?
Meanwhile, like some quiet little sub plot, Team New Zealand
are going about their business. Tom Schnackenberg maintains
that over 50% of the groundwork is devoted to racing the two
black boats. They have moved on from testing! The black yachts
are racing around full-sized Cup courses and are very much gearing
up for the real McCoy. "We are getting quite a lot of benefit
out of our racing," Schnackenberg said. "We learn quite a bit
about speed in the process of racing. We are racing in a whole
range of conditions, so we hope to be able to sail competently
in all conditions by February." Recently while the rest of the
gang is duking it out, the Team New Zealand boys are working
in the higher wind ranges with gusts over 25 knots and the easterly
breeze kicking up difficult seas. Rumor has it that the yachts
are extremely close. Team New Zealand talks a lot about how
fortunate they are to have so many individuals that they can
call on in contrast to 1995 when they had to pull together crew
numbers by pulling them out of the sail lofts and boat building
sheds.
Schnackenberg has said he considers the challengers to be very
fast and competitive and that the boats are very close in performance.
He went on to comment that the boats are all of a similar weight
but shape had a lot to do with different performances in different
conditions. "Auckland throws up enough of a range of conditions
that every dog has its day, with the result that no particular
boat is jumping out," As the sticky end of the completion gets
close there is discussion about the breach in protocols and
if a challenger makes it into the America's Cup that has breached
an article of the protocol, like Stars and Stripes use of the
rudder purchased in Australia, the defender can reject the challenge
if they choose to. Schnackenberg response to questioning on
the subject was, "We will cross that bridge when we get to it,"
No doubt over the next few weeks there will be many bridges
that need to be crossed but the only certainty is that there
are no certainties, add to that mixture the uncertainty the
New Zealand performance, the uncertainty of Auckland weather
pattern then the outcome is still very much still to be decided.
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